Storiesonline.net
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                               Danni Tyler
                           by Prince von Vlox

Copyright© 2008 by Prince von Vlox


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Description: Danielle Tyler is relocated from her home in Tiburon Ca to the Project, settling in Valley's End. The story is about her struggles to adapt to a different world. Set in the same world as Three Valleys - Sammi.

Codes: ScFi nud
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Chapter 1


"I don't even own a skirt," Danielle Tyler said. "How can I pack one?"

"What about that denim mini you bought a couple of months ago?" her mother asked.

"I got icky frog guts on it in Biology," Danielle said. "I tried washing it, but they wouldn't come out, so I threw it away."

"Nevertheless, your aunt said you'll have to pack several skirts and dresses. No jeans, no slacks."

"What about shorts?"

"She didn't say."

"If they won't let me wear jeans, then they probably won't let me wear shorts. Where am I going?"

"To live with your Aunt Jessica."

Danielle shook her head. "Where does she live? You never said."

"In some sort of experimental housing project, that's all I know."

"Oh great," Danielle said, flopping down on her bed. "I'll be living in the projects. That'll do wonders for my reputation. I'll never hear the end of it."

"It isn't in this school district," her mother said. "Aunt Jessica lives up north somewhere. It's all hush-hush, and not part of some government housing scheme."

"Still—"

"And you'll get a better education than you're getting in that school you attend now."

"That wouldn't be hard," Danielle said. "They could run us through any elementary school in another state and we'd probably learn more."

"Some of the finest people come out of the California Public Education System—" her mother began.

Danielle was having none of that. "Yeah, but they also spent time in a real school, not in an advanced babysitting system. They teach to the dumbest kid in the class. I can do most of my homework before I leave school."

"But your grade point average is—"

"That's a load of bull, Mom, pardon my language. You have to consciously attempt to fail the tests to avoid getting good grades, and even then, some of the teachers won't let you fail. Half the stuff they teach us is political crap, and the rest is 'feel good' stuff that is like totally useless in the real world. There's a reason all the good teachers go to work for businesses. It's so they can teach kids what they need after they get their diploma."

"Same old Danielle," her mother said with a tight smile. "Where did you come up with such reactionary views? Never mind," she added with a wave of her hand. "We have more important things to deal with, such as finding at least three skirts for you." She eyed Danielle's closet. "Do you have any dresses?"

"I haven't worn a dress since fifth grade," Danielle said. "School picture day."

Her mother fished a letter out of her pocket. "It doesn't say you need a dress, but I've always felt a woman, especially a young woman, should have some choices. We'll go shopping this afternoon and buy you some things."

"Mother! My friends are coming over, and—"

"And they'll have to wait. Your Aunt Jessica is due here tomorrow afternoon, and this is the only chance we'll have to do some shopping."

Danielle had heard that tone before, and knew her mother wasn't going to be budged. Look on the bright side, she told herself. If you work it right, you can use her credit card, not yours.

"At least let me tell my friends I won't be seeing them until late this afternoon," she said.

"I thought they were in school."

"They are. Don't worry, I'll text 'em."

Her mother folded her hands in her lap. "Very well, but hurry. I want to miss most of the traffic."

Her parents had sprung this whole thing of moving out of the district on her by surprise. She'd tried to put her foot down, and discovered that they weren't interested in her thoughts. She hadn't expected her folks to move so fast. Normally they took their time and 'thought it over'. But then she thought of the party she wouldn't have to go to at the end of the week. It was one of those parties at Carol Anne's place. Her parents were out of town for a month so the party was going to be one giant orgy. She was still sore down there from having her last pregnancy taken care of and she just didn't feel like having sex, but she'd be expected to screw a couple boys at the party, even if it hurt.

She had one way to stay with her friends, and that was if the school administration stopped things. She knew they didn't like to lose students. It reduced their funding, and that was important to them.

The administrator put up a fight. It had taken three days to get all of the paperwork straightened out. The administrator had thrown up all sorts of roadblocks and made her parents swear up and down she wasn't going into a voucher school, whatever that was. Her father assured them that this was a move out of state for legal reasons and they had very little choice in the matter. He hinted that the Federal government was involved, and all of a sudden the problems just seemed to vanish. In less than an hour she was processed through, her records were bundled up and she was sent off with their best wishes.

She thought about that as they went downtown. This whole thing seemed rather strange. Kids did not get bundled off to a relative's on such short notice, not in this day and age. Years ago they would if the girl was pregnant, but that didn't happen any more. But here she was, almost ready to move to ... somewhere.

"Good, there's a parking spot," her mother said, and careened around a corner to narrowly beat out a Mercedes. Her mother killed the engine and looked over brightly. "Ready?"

"I guess," Danielle replied. She loved to shop, but that was with her friends. With her mother along she couldn't do any of the things she liked to do: try on weird outfits, flirt through the store window in something too short and tight to wear in public, and so on. She and her friends could easily spend a whole day going from store to store. But not this time. It was clear that her mother was a woman on a mission.

Apparently Aunt Jessica had sent a description of the typical skirt most girls were wearing in this town where she lived. Danielle looked at herself in the mirror when she tried on the first outfit her mother liked that didn't make her stomach turn over. The skirt came down to the middle of her knee. It seemed so ... old-fashioned. She'd spotted several stylish minis that were more her idea of what to wear, including one that had been incredibly cute, and short enough to make Melissa Kentridge jealous, but her mother had shaken her head. Reluctantly, Danielle put them back on the rack.

Part of the problem was her height. She was tall and willowy, and things that fit her slender build were hard to find. Her mother did have a sense of style, and she seemed to find those things that actually went with her blonde skin tones and short blonde hair. Danielle remembered a girl who'd been in school less than a month named Teresa. It was obvious her clothes had been picked out by someone who wanted to make her look bad. The cuts were all wrong, the colors didn't match, and all in all she looked so out of place it was a wonder she didn't go home crying every night. Given some of the girls at school, it was more like a major miracle Teresa wasn't an emotional basket case.

When they got home Danielle laid her purchases out on her bed: five skirts, two dresses, and a slip. That had been more than $300 in new clothes. That was twice as much as she'd spent in months. She made a note: she needed to shop with her mother more often, or at least with her mother's credit card.

It hadn't been all dresses and skirts. She'd sarcastically laid out several sets of knee-high socks to go with the skirts, but her mother had shrugged. "If you want them, you'll have to pay for them yourself."

Danielle had, but more out of rebellion than anything else. But her mother had sprung for several pairs of tights to wear under the skirts. From the few hints her mother had dropped, she'd decided Aunt Jessica lived back in the mountains. She'd seen reports of snow up there, and people who made girls go to school in the snow, in a skirt, had to be crazy, or at least men, which was often the same thing.

It was all right not to wear socks or tights down here next to San Francisco Bay. Sure, the breezes off the Bay could get a bit cool at certain times of the year, but that didn't happen that often. This was a temperate climate, and you could get away with almost anything as long as it was fashionable.

Her mother volunteered to iron and pack her new clothes, which was a surprise. That let her spend time with her friends. They took her to a Starbucks where they sat and talked until well after dark.

"I wish my folks would take me out of school," Joanne Simmons had said.

"Are you... ?"

"Again," Joanne nodded. "I'm going to see the doctor tomorrow. At least they can't tell my folks."

"I had it done about a month ago," Danielle said. "My cousin was visiting, and I asked her not to say anything, but..." She spread her hands helplessly. "I bet she has a mouth on her."

"Yeah, but I hear some of those schools up north can be pretty good," Kendra Wilson said. "You won't have to put out for the boys, and you'll get a real education."

Kendra was a brain, and made no secret that she wanted to be a doctor. When some of the more popular girls had begun picking on her because she wasn't as active as they were, and ragging on her because she studied all of the time, she had smiled back at them coldly. "At least I'll have a future that won't involve having to spread my legs all of the time to get a guy to like me. That's more than I can say for you. You might as well charge for it, you know? In fact, you will be, it just won't be a direct cash payment."

Naturally the more popular girls had resented her, and the only thing that had kept a fight from breaking out right then was the unexpected appearance of a teacher. They'd tried to get back at Kendra by sabotaging her books and locker, but that had failed when Kendra had put cardboard over the grill in her locker. And as for her books, one of the perpetrators, Melissa Kentridge as a matter of fact, had been caught trying to pour ink into Kendra's backpack. They'd been reduced to trying to ruin her clothes during gym, leaving stains and other marks on her jeans.

Kendra had retaliated by taking something from her College Prep Chemistry class and pouring it on their clothes after gym. The stink was so bad the girls had to go home to change. After that the attacks on her had slacked off.

"Who did you go see, Danni?" one of the other girls asked. "I'm not sure yet, and my last doctor was hopeless."

"Dr. Gilbertson down by the mall. The best thing is you can get to his office by going through the mall, so if your folks sees your car she'll think you're just shopping. He doesn't have much personality, but he has gentle hands and his instruments are warm."

"God!" Joanne rubbed her arms. "There's this doctor I went to a couple of months ago to see if I'd had any leftover problems from the last time I'd gone in to fix things, and he had a cold speculum. He put that thing in me and I thought I was going to jump straight to the ceiling."

The other girls around the table shivered. "Male doctors wouldn't do that if they knew what it felt like," Danielle said. "Give me a woman MD any day. Dr. Gilbertson is an exception. His wife's an OB/GYN, and she probably told him."

"So where, exactly, are you going?" Joanne asked after a bit.

"Some place way north," Danielle said. "I think it's almost all the way up by Mt. Lassen, maybe even in Oregon."

"That's out of the state," Keri said. "God, that is like so far from here, hickville and a half. I wonder if they even have running water and flush toilets."

"Of course they do," Kendra said. "They might not have good internet connectivity or cell phones, or if they do, they might be limited, but other than that they're just as modern as we are."

"You mean I could end up with dial-up?" Danielle said. "God, that takes like forever to load. How can anyone stand it?"

"People used to," Kendra said. "If that's all you've got, well, you used to it. Last summer we went on vacation to this place in Nevada. No cell phones at all, and after a while I didn't miss it."

"That's all right for you," Keri said, "but some of us like to keep in touch with our friends. I'm afraid Danni is going to be so far away that she'll be out of touch."

"At the very least I'll want to tell you about my classes," Danielle said. "They've got to be better than what we're taking right now."

"Yeah," Joanne said. "They think they're teaching us something, but did you notice how much more you can learn in one of those 'For Dummies' books?"

"If only they didn't have a name like that," Keri said. "That's the last thing you want to be seen with. People will think you're stupid."

"Buy book covers," Kendra said. "You can buy book covers that make them look like regular textbooks."

"I may have to," Joanne said. She looked at Danielle and shook her head. "God, I wish I was going with you. Anything to get out of that school."

"Only one more year to go," Keri said.

"Yeah, that means at least one more visit to the doctor, too. My sister is doing her first two years at the Community College. She can get birth control without mom freaking out. Of course she told me she doesn't need it. She doesn't have all that pressure to put out."

"I wish there was something we could do about that," Danielle said. "The trouble is, the administrators listen to the guys because they—"

"I know this one," Keri said, interrupting her. "They thought they were over-compensating for girls. Now if guys could get pregnant..."

"Be a whole different world," Danielle sighed. "Like that's going to happen."

The other girls nodded at this common wisdom. They talked some more, but eventually they broke up. They had dates, homework, and dinner to go to.

Aunt Jessica showed up right before lunch the next day. Danielle hadn't noticed her aunt wearing a skirt the previous times she'd visited. She must have, though, but after a while you just didn't notice it. Her skirt wasn't one of those fuddy ones she saw on the religious freaks, either; it was actually somewhat stylish an A-line skirt that looked like it was floating around her legs. She thought it was made out of rayon, but after a bit she wasn't sure. At least it wasn't one of those gray wool things the bible-thumpers wore.

Aunt Jessica wasn't wearing stockings or tights, so maybe it wasn't as cold as she was expecting. Of course it was just as likely that she kept the inside of the car nice and warm, and she found tights or nylons uncomfortable. A lot of gals hated wearing nylons because they'd bunch and pinch at the most awkward places, and would get runs after only one wearing.

"Everything ready?" Aunt Jessica asked after greeting everyone with a hug.

"I'm all packed," Danielle said. Out of defiance she was wearing jeans. She wasn't going to put on a skirt until they forced her to.

"Be good," her mother said, giving her a hug and a kiss. "And call when you get there."

"I will, mom," Danielle said. She could feel tears lurking somewhere, and she tried to snuffle them back. It was her first real time to leave home. Summer camp had always been for just two weeks, so it didn't count.

"I'll let you know how things go," Aunt Jessica said.

Danielle loaded her things in the car, and then slid in on the passenger's side. She wasn't sure if she was looking forward to this. She knew she was going to miss her friends, but she wasn't going to miss the other girls at school. Or the boys constantly hitting on her. On balance, she thought, this could be pretty good. It certainly couldn't get much worse.

Her aunt tried to draw her out a bit, but after a series of one-syllable replies she concentrated on driving. They were headed north, but after they got off I-5 Danielle couldn't tell where they were, except that it was in the mountains. She wasn't even sure which mountains, the Coastal Range, or the Sierra Nevadas; she'd been dozing when they'd made the turn. All she really knew was that they drove up one valley after another with nothing but an endless parade of trees around them.

It'd been bright and sunny in the Bay Area when they'd left. But in the mountains the clouds rolled in, rain began to fall, and the traffic got lighter. The radio didn't seem to be playing much that was interesting—Aunt Jessica did let her tune it to different stations—so she began to wish she'd brought a magazine or hadn't packed her iPod.

They came around a curve, and Aunt Jessica slowed. There was a small town up ahead, with a couple of gas stations, a diner, a church, and a bunch of houses crowded close to the road. Incongruously, there was what looked like a fairly good restaurant on one of the side streets. They drove past all of that, pulling into the last gas station.

"This is just for gas," Aunt Jessica said. "Do you have to use the bathroom? We still have at least an hour to go."

"It'd help," Danielle said.

"Be quick. I want to do this last section before it gets dark."

Danielle got the key and walked around to the side door. The Women's Restroom was remarkably clean, and even smelled of lilacs. When she was done she took a few moments to brush her hair out and tie it back in a simple ponytail. She refreshed her make-up, too. She'd shadowed her eyes to get that deep mysterious look she liked, and used an eyebrow pencil to make her blonde eyebrows stand out. Now she put a little more blush on the apples of her cheeks. The rest of her face had filled out a little since she'd seen the doctor, so at least she didn't have that 'hollow waif' look some of the girls liked, what the magazines called heroin chic. She didn't want to look like a hag when she saw the rest of the family.

Her aunt was tapping her fingers on the steering wheel when she got back to the car. She smiled, though, instead of saying something catty, and they were off.

They didn't get back on the highway. Instead they turned uphill on one of the local roads. The road was slick, and her aunt slowed down. The occasional car passed them, as did a couple of pick-ups. After about 45 minutes Aunt Jessica slowed way down, and it was obvious she was looking for a particular turn-off. When she saw the gravel road leading off into the trees, she smiled and made the turn.

They bounced through some potholes, turned a couple of corners, ground their way up a hill, and emerged on a smoothly paved road. After two more miles, and driving past numerous side roads, they pulled into the parking lot of a gray two-story building. The parking lot was at least half-full. Most of the cars looked like they were one or two years old, though she saw a couple of pick-ups that had rust spots, Bondo, and duct tape.

"We have a check-in procedure," Aunt Jessica said. "You'll have a doctor to see, and—"

"A doctor?" Danielle felt a cold spear stab through her. She might be able to hide things from her mother, but not a doctor.

"They want to make sure you're current on all of your shots, and things like that."

"I am."

"They're going to make sure. Now let's get your luggage out of the car."

Her aunt found a handcart, and helped Danielle pile her things on it. They left them with a man standing at a loading dock, and Aunt Jessica led her through the front door, past a receptionist, and to an office deeper in the building.

"New person," Aunt Jessica told the woman in the severely tailored suit behind the desk. She took a folder out of her purse. "Here's the case file."

The woman read through the file very carefully, and then entered something in the computer than was on her desk. After reading that, she signed a sheet of paper and handed the folder back.

"Very good. Everything appears to be in order. Escort her down to Medical, please. They'll want to do the usual. When you're done, she's to see Mr. Halberstam in Room 201. He'll be expecting you."

Medical smelled of antiseptic. Aunt Jessica introduced her to a slender, dark-haired woman in a lab coat; she had a name tag that said Dr. Wayland. "This is my niece Danielle. She'll be moving in with us, and she's to have the complete work-up."

"We'll get right with her," Dr. Wayland said. She took Danielle back into an exam room, and handed her a hospital gown. "You'll need to change."

"I thought you were just going to check my shots and things like that," Danielle said.

"We will, but the law requires that I give you a complete physical."

"Complete?"

Dr. Wayland nodded. "This'll go faster if you change. I'll be back in a couple of minutes." She turned and left.

Reluctantly, Danielle stripped and put on the hospital gown. She was sitting in a chair—this place didn't have any magazines to read—swinging her feet when the doctor came back.

"Ah, good." She took down a blood pressure cuff. "We'll start with the basics."

Two hours later Danielle was ready to grab her clothes and run. She'd never had a check-up like this one. They looked at everything! They checked her blood, her urine, swabbed the inside of her mouth, examined her eyes, did things to her skin, including taking samples of that and her hair, even put her in the stirrups and did a pelvic.

She hadn't expected that.

"No scarring," the doctor said after peering inside her. "That's good. Chemical abortion?"

Danielle swallowed. "Yes, ma'am," she got out weakly. She'd never talked about it to anyone. It was one of those things you didn't talk about.

"Well, it looks like there was no permanent damage. That's good. Have you had a period since then?"

"Uh, no ma'am. I only had it done about two weeks ago."

"I see." The doctor straightened up and noted something on her chart. "All right. I need to see the blood work before we go much farther. You can put your clothes back on."

Danielle scrambled back into her clothes and sat on the edge of the examining table. The doctor went through the original file folder, nodding to herself from time to time. Finally she took a syringe out of a cabinet and filled it with some clear liquid.

"Bare your arm, please."

"What's that?"

"This will induce your period."

"Will I get cramps? Sometimes I've gotten them."

"Probably not," Dr. Wayland said. She swabbed Danielle's arm and gave her the injection. "I want you to see a doctor the day after your period ends. We'll get you started on the standard contraceptive routine and get you some medication for that nasty infection you have."

"Infection... ?" She didn't think she had syphilis again. She wasn't sure if she had gonorrhea or chlamydia. She hoped not, that would be the second time she'd had both.

"You have a bronchial infection that we can clear up right away," the doctor said. "Have you noticed the way you've been coughing?"

"Yes, but everyone coughs like that."

"You have a highly contagious form of bronchitis. Fortunately there's a cure." She left the room, returning moments later with a small brown bottle. "One pill a day for three days. Take it before you have anything to eat, and don't eat for at least half an hour after you've taken the pill. Water is fine, though. You can have all of the water you want. If you feel nauseous, tell your Aunt and she'll take you to a doctor."

The phone in the corner rang. The doctor talked to someone briefly, nodding. Finally she looked at Danielle as she hung up. "My, my. Syphilis, and a recent infection at that. We have to get that cleared up right away. Negative on any of the other sexually transmitted diseases, which is good. There are antibodies in your blood for gonorrhea, which suggests you've had it recently."

"I got it last year," Danielle said. "The doctor I was seeing said she had cleared it up about two months ago."

"That fits what I'm seeing." The doctor returned to her cabinet for another syringe and some more pills. "I'm going to give you a shot. After that I want you to wait an hour and then take these three pills. That should take care of that. Oh, and no sex for a few days." She smiled. "With your period being induced I don't think you'll feel like it anyway, but I have to caution you."

Danielle gave the doctor another weak smile. "That's okay, I haven't felt like it since the ... procedure."

"I'm not surprised." The doctor made a few more marks in her folder. "I'm giving you a tentative clearance, but only if you see me or another doctor right after your period." She handed Danielle a large folder crammed with paper. "These are your medical records, and when you get settled, you'll need to take these to whatever doctor you see."

"Will it be you?"

Dr. Wayland smiled. "Possibly. I usually practice in Terminus, though, and from the notes in your case file, I don't think that's where you'll be living. But if you are, I'd love to have you as a patient. I always love a challenge."

"A ... challenge?"

"You're a sick girl, and it'll take a while to clean everything out." She looked up at the door. "Now go, you still have a couple of stops to make."

Aunt Jessica was waiting in the hall. They went downstairs to a small locker room. "Take off your clothes," her aunt said. "You need to take a disinfecting shower."

"A ... what?"

"A shower. It's full of disinfectants. It's a requirement. And you'll have new clothes to wear. While you were with the doctor I bought you some things to wear."

Danielle began to unbutton her blouse. "How did you know my size? You didn't go through my things, did you?"

Aunt Jessica shook her head. "I asked your mother before we left. The clothes may not fit perfectly, but we can take care of that with a little needle and thread. You and Jenny can go shopping later today and get some things that fit properly."

Reluctantly Danielle went through the shower, scrubbing away vigorously. She didn't know what was in the chemicals, but it made her skin tingle. When she emerged she somehow wasn't surprised to see that her jeans had disappeared, and there was a modest skirt there instead. Grumbling to herself—she felt like her privacy had been invaded by somebody going through her things—she pulled it on. Then she had to deal with her hair. She was irritated enough she decided to let people see her without her make-up. But her hair ... she angrily yanked her brush through it until it began to look something like she wanted. When she was satisfied, she went looking for her aunt.

"That shower—"

"I know," Aunt Jessica said. She smelled of the same stuff in the shower, and she wasn't wearing the same clothes she'd had on before. "I hate it myself, but it's a necessity. When we get home you should wash your hair again and get the smell of the disinfectant out of it."

"That was the most thorough medical check-up I've ever had."

"That's because we want to stop things before they become a problem." Aunt Jessica started for the stairs at the other end of the hall. "Now comes the difficult part," she said in a low voice. "I want you to listen very carefully to what you're going to be told."

Mr. Halberstam was a very stern looking middle-aged man with a long face and thinning brown hair. He was wearing a white shirt and tie, and was reading a folder in front of him when Danielle knocked.

"Come in, Miss Tyler," he said. He waited until Danielle was seated before folding his hands on his desk. "I'm here ... we're meeting like this ... so you can learn the basic rule that will govern your life for the next few years. In a few minutes you're going to go through a door elsewhere in this building. What you see on the other side of that door can never be discussed with anyone on this side. Understand?"

"Even my parents?"

"Especially not your parents," he said. "If you do, you will be subject to arrest and imprisonment, and so will they. Keep that in mind." He studied her face. "Do you understand?"

"What is this, some super-secret government project?"

"It is not a government project," Mr. Halberstam said, "but other than that, yes."

"And you think you can throw me in jail and—"

"We don't think we can put you in jail, we know we can because the law says we can, and we've done it."

"But this is California and the Uni—"

"I think you'll find that that does not matter." He pushed several documents across his desk. "I need your signature on these. I have had copies made, and you can read them at your leisure. The simplest thing, though, is to remember that you can't discuss anything that you see with people on this side of that door. Understand?"

There was something about his tone that told Danielle he was dead serious. She still had her cell phone, though it was buried in the bottom of her purse. She'd call Kendra when she could, and ask her. She was the brain, she would know how binding all of this was. She gave Mr. Halberstam a smile, and signed where he wanted.

When that was done, Aunt Jessica led her downstairs. They passed a window that looked out over the parking lot. The rain had given way to snow, and a light dusting covered the trees and cars. They turned a corner and went through two more rooms and a door where Aunt Jessica presented a keycard. The next room was much smaller, and had a counter in front of what looked like an airport metal detector set in a door. There was a curtain hanging in the middle of it and she couldn't see what was on the other side.

"Just follow me," Aunt Jessica said. She stepped through the curtain. Danielle blinked in surprise. She had the impression that the curtain didn't really part, but she couldn't see beyond that. Shrugging, she followed her Aunt.

Danielle felt a tingle as they passed through.

Her aunt sighed, a big smile on her face. "Won't be long now," she said.

They passed a window, and Danielle stopped in shock. It was sunny outside, with blue skies, drifting clouds, and not a raindrop in sight.

"Wh-what happened?" Danielle asked, staring out the window. There was a town on the other side of a creek. There were shops, buildings, and all of the other things a town had, except she didn't see any cars. There was a train or whatever it was called sitting at what had to be a station. It pulled away as she watched, disappearing around some buildings to her right.

"Where are we? Where is this place? It was raining a few moments ago."

"We're home," her aunt said. She took Danielle by the hand, and led her toward an outside door. "And don't worry, we'll get all of your questions answered."



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Chapter 2


"This," Aunt Jessica said, waving at the town, "is known as The Project."

"The Project?" Danielle asked after a moment. "What kind of project?" She looked around. There wasn't a rundown apartment building in sight. "This certainly doesn't look like Northern California, either. Where are we, and how did we get here?"

They were standing on an outdoor patio, and Aunt Jessica led her to a table that was slightly apart from the others. "We're not really in California," Aunt Jessica said. She took a deep breath, smiling. "I'll explain after we get home." She waved at someone coming up a path from town. Uncle Jack and Cousin Jenny waved back, and joined them moments later.

After the obligatory round of hugs, and a quiet "We need to talk," to Cousin Jenny, they trooped off to the train, dragging Danielle's luggage along the flagstone path that linked them. They did have to stop at the gate over a deeply cut creek and identify themselves. That's when Danielle realized the building they'd arrived in—and she had no idea how that had been accomplished—was isolated by a fence and either a river or creek from the rest of the town. It wasn't surrounded by trees, either, and the only snow she could see was on a distant mountain. It was just a short walk to the station from that stop.

"We'll be home in 30 minutes," Uncle Jack said when everyone was settled.

Danielle nodded noncommittally. The first mile of track skirted the town, Terminus, she'd seen the name at the station, and she spent it looking at the people. Every woman was wearing a skirt or a dress; only the men were wearing slacks or pants. It reminded her of pictures of the 1930s and 40s. Even the kids: boys in jeans, girls in skirts.

Every square inch of land outside of the town was being farmed. The soil, what she could see beneath the plants, looked dark and rich, about like what she'd once read you found downhill from a volcano, like what she'd been told existed in Idaho.

"The area we're in is known as Three Valleys," Aunt Jessica said, "although there are more than just the three original valleys. We just left the town of Terminus, which is the largest town in Three Valleys, and the seat of the local government."

"Why call it Three Valleys if there are more than three valleys?"

"It's like a region, or state, and the original settlements were in three valleys, hence the name. There are actually six different major valleys, and an area called Seaside, which is down on the coast. We live in Valley's End, which is the next town west of here. It's where this particular valley ends. It's got a beautiful waterfall, and a terrific view of the sunset out over the ocean."

"When it isn't cloudy," Jenny added.

"Are they really different valleys?" Danielle asked.

Aunt Jessica nodded. "Each valley is 40 to 50 miles long, and anywhere from three to 10 miles wide. Two of these valleys descend from the same general mountainous area, and the others split off from them."

"There's a word for it," Danielle said, "but I can't remember what it is. But mudflows come down them from volcanoes. I saw something about them on Discovery Channel one night."

"Probably referring to the valleys that ring Mt. Rainier in Washington State," Aunt Jessica said. "You get that from glaciers at the head of valleys, which we have. The volcano, as near as we can determine, is extinct. But in case it isn't, we have ways to divert the mudflow away from where people live."

"Lahar," Danielle said. "That's what they called the mudflows. I remember they said there's evidence there have been a number of mudflows, so they called those valleys Lahar Valleys."

"Maybe in a few days we can go to the other end of the valley," Jenny said. "The view of the mountain range up there is pretty spectacular."

"Later," Uncle Jack said. "But first, we have to get you home and set up in your room."

"And tomorrow and the next day you'll be taking placement tests for school," Aunt Jessica added.

'Home' was a two-story house behind a great lawn on one end of town. There wasn't an attached garage, which seemed strange, but the house was only a few steps from the street where a bus passed every few minutes. Her room was on the second floor, at the end of the hall next to a small bathroom. It was painted a muted green, and had a double-bed, a modest walk-in closet, a vanity with a large mirror, and a window overlooking some other houses.

"This is pretty bare bones," Danielle said as she dumped her luggage at the end of the bed.

"We just moved in a couple of months ago," Jenny said from behind her. "Until then we lived on the other side of town. They let us keep going to the same high school, which is good, otherwise I'd be going to school in Terminus."

"You wanted to stay with your own group?"

"My boyfriend," Jenny said. "Anyway, about the room, we'll have to fix it up. You know, maybe something for the walls, and some flowers for the window."

Flowers for the window? Danielle thought. How old-fashioned. She smiled, though, and nodded. "First, though, we need to make the bed."

"We have linens in the closet," Aunt Jessica said. She was standing in the doorway with an armful of sheets and pillows. "Let's get these on."

She and Jenny made the bed while Danielle unpacked and hung up her clothes. When she came to the few books she'd brought along she paused. "What about school?" she asked.

"We'll get started on that tomorrow," Aunt Jessica said. "You'll have to take some tests to see which classes you have to take, and which you can skip."

That seemed sensible; she'd have had to do that in any school she'd changed to. She closed the suitcase. She had her iPod buried at the bottom of her suitcase, but hadn't taken it out yet. She made a mental note to learn where she could download some more tunes.

"In the meantime," Aunt Jessica said, "we have to call your mother and let you know you've arrived."

Apparently the call involved a special operator. Danielle heard Aunt Jessica talking to someone for several minutes. She flashed Danielle a smile while her finger tapped on the table next to the phone. Finally, though, her face lit up.

"Alexa, Jessica. We just arrived, and Danielle is starting to get unpacked. Sure, I'll put her on." She handed Danielle the phone. "Be careful what you say," Aunt Jessica warned.

Danielle gulped and took the phone. "Hi, Mom."

"How was your trip?"

"Long. I don't ever want to try a bus trip. It'd be longer than this, and more boring."

Her mother laughed lightly. "Don't tell your father, but that's how I feel whenever we go anywhere. What's your room like?"

She described her room, but having caught her Aunt's eye, didn't say a thing about what it looked like out the window. Her mother asked a couple more questions, mostly about how she was feeling, before asking to have the phone passed back to Aunt Jessica.

After a few more words, plus a promise to write, Aunt Jessica hung up. "What time do you think it is?" she asked.

Surprised, Danielle glanced at her watch. "Uh, just about 7:30," she said.

"Actually, it's closer to 3:30," Aunt Jessica said. She sighed and settled at the kitchen table. "Before I start, can I get you something, iced tea or water?"

"A Diet Coke would be great."

"Sorry, we don't have those." She glanced at the refrigerator. "I guess you'll have to settle for water." She dumped some ice cubes in a glass and added some water.

"Now this will take some getting used to," she said as she put the glass in front of Danielle and settled back in her chair, "but we aren't in California, we aren't even in the U.S."

"We ... where are we?"

"We're on the South Mexican coast, or what will be Mexico in a few thousand years. More important than that, though, is when we are. As near as the scientists can tell, the current year is 18,300 years BC, give or take a few months."

"18— You're like kidding me, right?"

Aunt Jessica shook her head. "How we got here is kind of complicated. How much history have you had? Enough to understand what happened in WW2?"

"Sort of. We expelled Americans of Japanese descent from their lands, terror-bombed Tokyo and Germany, and atom-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

"Oh, that is so incomplete in so many ways," Aunt Jessica said, sighing. "And one-sided, too. I suppose we extended our Imperialist reach around the world."

"Sort of," Danielle said, "though that wasn't very clear. I mean, if we did, and we exploited all of these people, then why did we bring all of our troops home? But we did. I think we substituted economic imperialism for doing it the way the Romans and others did it. We learned all about how the really rich forced people to work for starvation wages, children couldn't get health care, and things like that, and how our companies, mostly the multinationals, dominate whatever place they plant their tentacles."

Aunt Jessica shook her head. "What you're going to learn in school is going to be a big shock. All right, I'll leave that up to the teachers.

"The United States fought Germany in WW2, as well as Japan and Italy. Shortly after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on us; we hadn't declared war on them, I might point out. When our troops finally fought their way into Germany—that would be in 1945—they found a lot of technical things the Germans had been working on. One of them is how we got here.

"I won't go into all of the 'why' and 'wherefore' that happened, but the US Government decided to settle a lot of people here in the Project. The idea was that if a nuclear war broke out between the US and the Soviet Union, there would be survivors. After a few years, though, we went independent. We cut all ties with the government, and became self-governing."

"But you could still come get me."

"I didn't say we cut our links to your world, just to the government."

Danielle stared at her aunt's face for a bit. "I'm not sure I believe you, but ... why not? But aren't we displacing the people who lived here? Isn't this another form of Imperialism? And aren't we polluting the world so future generations won't have any resources?"

"That's the thing," her aunt said. "We're not displacing anyone. This isn't our past, it's one of a number of possible pasts. Every so often there's an event, that if things had gone differently, would have produced a different future. For example, what if John Wilkes Booth had not shot Lincoln."

"But he did."

"But what if he didn't? What if he couldn't break into the President's Box, or the guard was there, or ... well, like that. Or what if William the Conqueror was killed at the Battle of Hastings? Or if Napoleon won at Waterloo? Each of those generates a new history, and the Germans found a way to tap into that, and we copied it from them.

"This past ... back in the past, a really long time ago, 74,000 BC as near as we can figure, a volcano in Indonesia blew up. This was a lot bigger than Mt. St. Helens, at least 10 or 15 times the size of that volcano; the crater is something like 30 miles long and five miles wide. The dust cloud blocked the sun, and that killed a lot of things."

"Like nuclear winter?"

"We're not sure of that," Aunt Jessica said. "But anyway, this dust cloud nearly killed off all of mankind. The evidence is that there were fewer than 10,000 people left alive by the time the dust cloud settled. In this history," she thumped the table for emphasis, "it did. There's no Cro-Magnon, no Neanderthals, or any of our related species. Even most of the Great Apes didn't survive."

"So..."

"There's nobody to displace. There was nobody here when we arrived, and believe me, we looked really hard for them. When we didn't find them, we moved in."

Danielle wanted to say something about what the White Man did to the Native Americans, and how wrong that was, but if there wasn't anyone to do that to ... She shook her head in confusion. "Are you sure?" she asked. "Did they look really hard?"

"The explorers knew all the places to look," Aunt Jessica said. "The only place they didn't look was up on the ice sheets, and anyone up there would stand out."

"Ice sheets? Like the North Pole?"

"We're in the middle of an Ice Age," Aunt Jessica said. "Ice covers half of the Northern Hemisphere, and maybe 30% of the Southern.

"Most of the people who settled here live in North America, though there are groups who've spread out elsewhere, such as us, people in the Bahamas, and so on."

"An Ice Age? It didn't seem cold out there."

"That's because we're far enough south that we don't notice the extremes. Summers up north aren't that warm, and the winters can be really cold, though the farther south you get, like here, the warmer it is. The trouble is, Center, which is the capitol, and where the first explorers arrived, is about a hundred miles south of the ice sheet. Scientists don't think the ice sheet will extend any farther south than where it is right now, but in case it does they'll have to move the capitol elsewhere."

Danielle shook her head. This was all so much, so fast. "You said you'd explain everything," she said at last, "and I guess you did. I'm not sure I understand all of it. There's so much that seems ... odd."

"Oh, there's a lot more," Aunt Jessica said, "and you'll learn that in school. A lot of what your teachers will tell you is going to be different than what you learned back in Tiburon." She smiled softly. "And when you have questions, you can always come to me with them."

"But wouldn't the teachers—"

"I teach history at the college here in Three Valleys," Aunt Jessica said. "I have books and other records that the teachers don't have." She paused, hearing a noise from elsewhere in the house. "Ah, Jenny is back. She'd gone to the store for me. She can show you around."

Danielle kept her face still. It sounded like things were a whole lot weirder than she'd imagined. "Tell me one thing," she asked. "I had a ... a condition, and did you ... how did you know? How did you find out? Did Jenny tell you or something?"

"She did," Aunt Jessica said. "When we visited last week back you were pretty depressed. Jenny figured out why right away, and she talked it over with me."

"Did you tell my mother?"

"No, I didn't."

Danielle slumped in her chair. "I just know that if she finds out she'll kill me or something."

"I think you underestimate your mother," Aunt Jessica said. She raised her voice. "Jenny!"

"Mom?"

"Why don't you take your cousin shopping? Show her around town, too. Dinner's not for several hours, so you might want to get her a snack or something, it's been hours since I know she ate.

"What'll I use for money? I only have a few dollars."

"You can take something out of my purse. Don't spend too much, though. Be prudent, but have fun."

-------

"It sure doesn't seem like a big town," Danielle said as she and Jenny rode the trolley into town. "How many people live here?"

"Almost 2,000," Jenny said. She was just a touch taller than Danielle, with an oval face and brown, shoulder-length hair that had a little curl right at the end. All the previous times Danielle had seen her, Jenny had been skinny and short, but in the last year the girl had shot up like a weed, and added womanly curves. She was wearing a brown dress with a dark red collar and belt, and black shoes that reminded Danielle of pictures of girls growing up in the 50s. She had a red leather purse slung casually over her shoulder.

"Terminus is the big town in Three Valleys," Jenny continued. "I think 7,000 people live there. But if you want a real city, that would be Center. I think 50,000 people live there, maybe double that if you include all of the little communities around it."

"How many people live in the ... Project?"

Jenny shrugged. "Well, they started with a million, but that was about 50 years ago. Three Valleys wasn't settled until the 60s, and I understand that only a thousand people or so were in that first group. Now? I'd say Three Valleys has at least 20,000 people in it. That's including Seaside."

"Are they all descended from those first people?" Danielle asked.

"Oh, goodness, no! There were at least three groups of settlers. The second group probably numbered a couple thousand people. I don't know how many were in the third group, but people have moved here from elsewhere in the Project. Then there's the birthrate; I think the average is 3.7 kids per family. The birthrate for the whole Project is probably similar. I haven't seen the official numbers, but there's a lot more than just the million that they started with."

"And they're all over the North American continent?"

"Not really. Most of the continent is covered with ice sheets. That lowers the sea level, of course, which opened more land for settlement, but you'll learn all about that in school. We're almost to where we need to get off."

Valley's End reminded her of those trendy towns on the California Coast. There were boutiques, regular stores, restaurants, and so on. The town was really crammed into a small area, so the streets were narrow. Danielle couldn't see any cars on the street, or even places for them to park. Instead the street was crowded with bicycles, pedestrians, and the trolley they were taking. It ran down the middle of the street just like in the pictures Danielle had seen from the old days.

There was a big roundabout in the middle of town, and when they got there Jenny stood up. "We get off here," she said. "Most of the clothing stores are down that street to the left," she added, "but first, I want to show you something."

She led Danielle through a park to the edge of a cliff. A waterfall was off to the left, while off to her right was a gondola the size of a bus that was coming up from below. "That's where the river that runs through the middle of the valley goes," Jenny said.

There was a walkway paralleling the edge of the cliff, and a tall fence bordering it. Danielle hooked her fingers in the fence and peered cautiously over the edge. She could see a town down below, half-hidden by the mist. It looked like it was perched on a stair step, with additional buildings dimly visible on lower steps.

"That's Upper and Lower," Jenny said, pitching her voice to be heard over the roar of the waterfall. "The falls are about 1,000 feet high, and there are additional waterfalls below Lower that, combined, are another 400 feet or so."

"Do many people live there?" Danielle asked. She was awed by the waterfall. That was much higher than Yosemite Falls, which she had seen the year before. She stepped back from the edge, and the noise noticeably diminished.

"A couple hundred live there," Jenny said. "There are turbines there that provide power for most of this end of the valley. And there's a railroad station that takes you south to some small towns, or west all the way to Seaside." She pointed off above the mist kicked up by the waterfall. "You can't see it from here, but Seaside is off in that direction."

"All I can see is the ocean," Danielle said, squinting a little against the light.

"Yeah, there are some islands out there, mostly used by the fisheries people." Jenny turned away, heading back through the park. "C'mon, we need to get you a few things."

"Can I visit Seaside?" Danielle asked as they followed the brick path back to the street.

Jenny shot her a funny look. "I think that's a call Mom has to make," she said at last. "Things are ... different there, way different, probably not at all something you're prepared for." She stopped on the sidewalk bordering the park, looked around, and headed off in one particular direction.

"What do you mean it's different? In what way?"

"I'll let Mom tell you. In the meantime, when you were coming through the Gate, did they give you some colored pills?"

"Gate?"

"You'll learn. When you saw the doctor, did the doctor give you any colored pills? Especially, did they give you a blue one?"

"Yes, she did. I suppose you'll now tell me you're going to show me how deep the rabbit hole goes?"

Jenny gave her a puzzled look. "Huh?"

"Rabbit hole. You know, from the movie The Matrix?"

"Never heard of it. You'll have to tell me later. The blue pill is to help your body adjust to the food here, which is a polite way of saying you won't get sick when you eat something."

They stopped at a walk-up deli on the side of the street. Jenny got a lemonade for herself. "What'll you have?" she asked.

Danielle read the menu. If they were eating in two or three hours, she shouldn't get a sandwich. Pickles—they were listed separately—might be good, but... "Potato salad," she said, "and—"

"Another lemonade," Jenny said, cutting in. She put some money on the counter. The woman handed over a small cardboard container filled with potato salad, and a cardboard cup of lemonade.

"I was hoping to get a Diet Coke," Danielle said as they settled on a bench just down the street. "I don't understand why you don't have any."

"It's ... complicated," Jenny said. "Mom said you wouldn't know some things, like what's available to drink. We don't have a lot of the things you do, like that Diet Coke stuff, so I was trying to save you some embarrassment. People can react differently to strangers, and ordering something from the other side would brand you as an outsider."

"Oh. What do they have to drink? I didn't see much on the menu."

"Hot and cold tea and coffee, those are the most popular, lemonade and sarsaparilla, soda water, which can be pretty good if you add some flavored syrup. They also have plain ice water."

Danielle frowned. "What about soft drinks?"

Jenny shook her head. "Nope. They have them in Center, but not here." She made a face. "Last year we went to Center for the Center Cup, mostly because my cousin Sammi was competing in them."

"Center Cup?"

"It's a big athletic contest. People come from all over the Project to compete, and the winner in each event gets a cup. They have rowing, tennis, equestrian, which I loved, baseball, track and field, and all sorts of other events. Somebody told me they even have a cooking competition. That's new this year. I don't know what they'd judge people on, taste is so subjective."

It must be like the Olympics, Danielle thought. Out loud, she asked, "What does your cousin compete in?"

"Tennis, Women's Singles, though she also has a friend she plays Doubles with. Sammi's going to college in Center. Dad made our trip a big holiday with my sister and brother coming along. Daniel just got married, so his wife Sharon came, too. We even brought Uncle Dick, Aunt Jasmine and their two kids."

Danielle couldn't remember meeting anyone Jenny had named, but she let that pass. She figured she'd have plenty of time to greet the rest of the family. But first she had something she needed to talk to Jenny about.

"Why did you tell your folks about me?" she asked around bites of potato salad.

"I had to," Jenny said. "I saw you a couple of years ago, remember? And the change in you was profound. You were ... I could see you were really depressed. I didn't realize why, not until you told me."

"That was supposed to be private," Danielle said.

"You were hurting," Jenny replied. "I knew you didn't want your mother to know, though I still don't understand why, and I had to do something in case you hurt yourself."

"I was getting over it," Danielle said. "What I was going through was perfectly normal."

"An abortion isn't normal," Jenny said. "And you've had two of them in the last two years. You told me so yourself. You weren't the carefree happy person I remember from a couple of years ago, and that bothered me."

"I've been growing up."

"There was more to it than that," Jenny said. "After you told me, I had to tell someone, so I told my Mom."

"I wish you hadn't."

"Why? So you could get pregnant again and have another abortion?"

"Girls have them all of the time," Danielle said.

"Not in Three Valleys, and we have..." Her voice trailed off and she looked away.

"You have... ?"

"Forget it. Just accept it that girls don't have abortions here in Three Valleys."

"I don't believe you, but we can discuss it some other time. What was going on in my life was none of your business. You shouldn't have butted in."

"I was afraid you were going to hurt yourself if somebody didn't."

"I had my friends to help me."

"From what you've told me, they're all in the same boat as you."

"Exactly! They knew what I was going through, and they were there for me, just as I was there for them."

"I still don't see why you didn't tell your mother what was going on."

"She would have killed me. I would have been destroyed in her eyes. I wouldn't have been her sweet, innocent little girl. She doesn't realize I'm not 9 years-old any more." Danielle bit back what else she was going to say. "You just don't get it, do you."

"Perhaps I understand more than you know," Jenny said softly. "I knew you were in a bad situation, one that was only going to get worse. You were sliding downhill, and somebody needed to give you a helping hand."

"I was going to be all right," Danielle said. "I'm graduating next year, and after that I'd be in college, and that whole situation would be behind me."

"Somebody should fix that situation before it ruins any more girls."

Danielle shook her head. "Schools are pretty much autonomous, especially in California. If you try to touch them, the Teacher's Union comes down on you, and you just can't beat them. A lot of people have tried, but nobody has ever succeeded. They have too much money and too much political clout, especially in the state government."

"What about their medical records? Somebody could stumble on those and tell everyone."

"That's just it," Danielle said. "There's a Federal law that says after a girl turns 13 her parents can't look at her medical records. Nobody can, and if they do, they pay a huge fine and go to prison."

"So that's how you kept your mother from finding out."

"Among other things, yes. And I got things taken care of before I swelled up. About the only thing she noticed was that my boobs got a little bigger, but that happens when a girl's a teenager."

Jenny opened her mouth as if to say something, and then shook her head instead. "I see you've finished the potato salad. Let's go do a little shopping."

"What did you have in mind?" Danielle asked. She was still a little nettled at Jenny, but it was over and done with, at least for now. She'd get back into school here, learn what she needed to graduate, and then prove her cousin wrong.

"I wanted to show you where you could buy personal things," Jenny said. "For starters, you need to get some shampoo and conditioner. I know you brought some, but you're going to run out, and I'm pretty sure we don't have the brands you're used to." She took a sniff. "I can still smell the disinfectant in your hair."

"I was going to wash it again tonight. What else?"

"Tampons, or pads if you use those."

"Tampons will be fine."

"And then some more variety in your clothes."

"I brought several outfits."

"You don't have any school uniforms."

"What? They have that reactionary idea here?"

Jenny shrugged. "Always have. It just means I didn't have to buy so many clothes. We'll have to get those, and then, who knows, maybe we'll have a little fun."

The next two hours passed in a blur. The only thing that stood out was that there were no dressing rooms. You just tried on the things right there next to the rack. Danielle was uncomfortable with that, but as they passed different stores she saw other people, men and women, doing the same thing. Nobody seemed to notice, or if they did, they hid it very well.

When she got home she discovered she had enough clothes to almost fill her closet. That was unexpected. She'd tried on everything, and was comfortable with the fit. She still didn't like the idea of wearing a skirt or dress all of the time, but every woman and girl she'd seen had been wearing them.

A different place with different customs, she thought. If only they didn't look so Donna Reed. They remind her of the pictures of Grandma Alice when she was a teenager. Danielle turned that idea over as she finished unpacking and storing the rest of her things in the dresser.

If what she'd learned was true, and these were people from the 1950s and 60s, what were the odds that they hadn't progressed like people back home? Pretty good, she decided. Their clothes look old-fashioned; did that mean their political and social beliefs were also old-fashioned? Look at the way Jenny reacted to the idea of abortions. Her beliefs were so... antiquated. Women, girls, had abortions, especially at her age when she didn't want to be burdened with a baby.

She'd just reached that point when Aunt Jessica called her down for dinner. The food looked familiar, and she stifled the smile that almost reached her lips. Of course it looked familiar. Roast Beef was roast beef, potatoes were potatoes, and green beans were green beans. Just because she was in a different place didn't mean things were completely out of whack.

Jenny hurried through her food. It turned out that she had a date that night. She was going to a party at somebody's house. They had a pool, though she didn't seem to be packing a suit. She was vague about it, but when Danielle hinted that she might be interested in coming along, Jenny politely turned her down.

"It's been a long day for you," Aunt Jessica added. "You really should get your rest. You have school placement testing tomorrow, and you'll want to be fresh for that."

"How was your day?" Uncle Jack asked after Jenny had left the table. "What've you seen so far?"

Danielle stumbled through an explanation of her shopping trip, but hemmed and hawed about what she thought of the things she'd overheard. Fortunately the meal ended right after that.

After dinner—dessert was ice cream—she went back to her room. She knew what Aunt Jessica had said, but she tried picking up a local radio station. She only found stations on the AM dial. One was playing classical music, one something that had to be country, and one that sounded like rock and roll. None of the songs sounded familiar. It wasn't what she was used to—Top 40 Rock—but it was better than silence. She plugged in her earphones, took out one of her books and started reading.

After a bit she decided to try her cell phone. She dug it out of her purse and tried dialing Kendra. The display came back "No carrier found." She tried a couple of other people, including her mother, but got the same message.

Frustrated, she resumed reading. She hadn't wanted to come here, but there were others who'd made the decision for her, and she couldn't do much about it. A lot of things could happen, including school working out. She hadn't really learned much there in Tiburon, despite people saying it was one of the better high schools in the Bay Area. She'd see with those placement tests Aunt Jessica had told her about.

She was getting ready for bed when she heard a noise through the partially open window. She snuck a peak through the curtains. Jenny and her date were leaning against each other as they walked up the sidewalk. They were holding hands and talking quietly, and Danielle strained, not quite able to hear what they were saying. They disappeared under the overhang over the front porch, and it was a long time before she heard Jenny open the front door.

She thought of dropping in on her cousin, but that would require moving, something she didn't quite feel like doing. The day had taken a lot out of her, and after a bit she turned off the light, pulled the covers up, and tried to go to sleep.

She could see the stars through her window, something she'd only been able to do at camp. They looked brighter, and she didn't recognize any of the constellations. That was another strange thing about this place.

Was it all true? She'd find out in the morning.



-------

Chapter 3


In the morning Jenny's face was glowing, and she was humming something to herself. She rushed her breakfast, grabbed her books and ran out the front door.

"Ah, that first rush of love," Aunt Jessica said, watching her daughter. "Jenny has a new boyfriend, and it's got her all excited."

"I can tell. She seemed pretty happy."

"I've seen her with other boyfriends. This one she might be get serious about."

"Do you know much about him?"

"Not yet." Aunt Jessica smiled. "I will, though. But that's for later. How do you feel this morning?"

"Cruddy. The doctor said she was going to induce my period, and she did."

"Are you cramping?"

"It's not that bad," Danielle said. "I'm not a basket case, I can function."

"Nevertheless, if you need something, I've got plenty of aspirin in the upstairs bathroom."

"No Tylenol?"

Her aunt shook her head. "No, just plain old aspirin. Ask if you need it. When you've finished breakfast we'll go to the school administration building in Terminus. The tests normally take most of the day, but between the different foods, different germs, and your period, we might want to limit things today to just the morning."

"I'm not a basket case," she repeated.

"I realize that, but I don't want you quitting halfway through the test because you're feeling sick. You did take your medication this morning, didn't you?"

"The moment I got up." Danielle pushed the plate away. "Why don't I go change?"

"Is that all you're going to eat?"

"If I ate more I'd get fat, and I don't want that."

Aunt Jessica sighed. "All right. I'll see you in the living room in a few minutes."

The School Administration shared the building with an elementary school. Danielle liked that idea. She remembered how fancy, and expensive, the Administration building was back where she came from. After talking with some people in the front office, Aunt Jessica took her to a small room in back. Here Danielle took test after test, some of them silly word association, others requiring her to bend and fold shapes and pick what they looked like. She also had to write a short essay, and answer a number of questions that she found confusing. When she finished the last one she learned that each segment had been timed.

When she was finally done, she and Aunt Jessica had a belated lunch. Afterward they were shown to an office where a man in a suit was pouring over her test results.

"This does not warrant putting her in a high school anywhere in the Project," he said finally. "She is at a late junior high level, and at least three years behind other kids in her age group." He flipped through several pages. "In some cases, four."

"And yet she's 15."

"I know. It's a crying shame what the people in Zero Phase think passes for a basic education, but we can only go on what she knows."

"I thought we had immigrants take tests to determine their academic level. Could we do that? It would mean she'd have a better chance of interacting with girls her age."

"And not boys?" He picked up a page from the front of the folder. "Oh. Yes, I see. In her case ... yes, that might be the way to go. I don't think it would be fair to her to just go on her public school record, she's obviously a better student than that. Or at least the potential is there."

"Why don't we try that," Aunt Jessica said.

The man consulted a calendar on his desk. "It takes about a day to set up. We could have her come back on Thursday. It would have to be in Midtown."

"We'll be there," Aunt Jessica said. "How long do those tests take?"

"All day," the man said. He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. "If we're going to call her an immigrant, she'll have to go through Orientation."

"I'll handle that," Aunt Jessica said, rising to her feet. "Thank you for getting this put together on such short notice."

"My pleasure." He smiled at Danielle as they left.

"What was that all about?" Danielle asked. "Junior High?"

"We had to determine your academic level," Aunt Jessica said. "Your results were not what we expected. Ordinarily you'd go directly to the academic level indicated by your tests. The trouble is, if we did that, you'd be put with kids who are 11 or 12. But it wouldn't be fair to you if we stuck you in a class full of younger girls. But if we take you as an immigrant, we have other options."

"More tests?"

"More tests, but you can end up in your age group but with different teachers and class material."

"So how do I prepare for them? Or can I?"

"You don't, not really. What you know is what you know. But these tests also measure your learning capacity, which is important."

"I thought I'd just, well, take up where I left off."

"Not here in the Project."

Feeling depressed, Danielle went back to her room when they got home. She felt like a 5th wheel on a car. She'd been all set to start a new school and make new friends. Yet now it looked like she was going to sit around for a few days.

There was a television downstairs, and after rattling around her room for a while, she went down and turned it on. There were several educational shows on at the moment. A couple of them were full of mathematics and equations, stuff clearly beyond her. She gave up on those after a couple of minutes, but there were history shows on other channels. These were documentaries, but they had a grittiness she couldn't ever recall seeing. That was really neat, and she was disappointed when the show ended. The camera work surprised her; she'd thought she was looking at real people, not actors.

An afternoon news program came on, and she almost turned off the TV, but something the man said when he was giving the weather forecast made her pause. "Tomorrow we should see a few early morning clouds. Thursday, more of the same, with rain likely in the afternoon and evening, persisting into Friday and the weekend."

She squinted at the date display on her watch. This was Saturday. But the man on the TV ... and then she remembered Aunt Jessica saying something about the time of day. There was a clock on the wall. It was 4:30, but according to her watch it was nearly 9:00. No wonder she felt out of sorts. Her whole sense of what day it was—and time—was all messed up.

She spent all of Wednesday watching TV. Now that she'd noticed it, she could see all sorts of little references to a different day of the week than her body was saying. There wasn't anything she could do about it, either, except grit her teeth and get through it.

On Thursday she and Aunt Jessica went to a town much farther up the valley. The tests were hard, and there were places where she drew an absolute blank. At the end of the she felt tired, and ended up going to bed early. The days seemed off and she felt tired all of the time. Having her period didn't help.

Her flow ended the next day, and Aunt Jessica took her in to see the doctor. It was Dr. Wayland, the one who'd examined her the day she'd arrived. The doctor ran more tests, gave her another shot and a different collection of pills. Finally she was done.

"What's the news?" Danielle asked. "Anything else wrong with me?"

"No, you've responded well to the treatments." She folded her hands on the reports. "Want to talk about it? I can't share what you tell me; we're under a doctor-patient privacy oath."

"Talk about what? What happened to me?"

"How could a girl from a prosperous family, and who's just about to turn 16, have two abortions in two years? Something must have happened to you. Care to talk about it?"

"You mean what you said, that you won't tell my family?"

"I don't know why you're worried about that," Dr. Wayland said, "I think they'd be more supportive than you give them credit for." She nodded. "But I cannot reveal what you tell me, unless it impacts your treatment, and another doctor, a specialist, needs to know."

Danielle pursed her lips. "Oh, all right," she said at last. "I almost don't know where to begin."

"Let me ask you a few questions," Dr. Wayland said. "How did things get started?"

"Parties," Danielle said at last. "Things always happened at parties."

"Parties?" Dr. Wayland raised an eyebrow. "Such as?"

"There was a party at Jocelyn Smith's house a couple of weeks ago," Danielle said. "Her house is popular because she has a pool, and her parents will often be gone most of the evening. Somebody put on some music, we drank a bit, a couple of kids hit some weed, and so on. That's how it always starts."

"Did you drink? Smoke?"

"I'd drink. I don't like blowing weed. I don't smoke, you see, and if I take a drag I start coughing. How can you get high if your face is turning green, and you can barely breathe?"

"But you said you drank?"

"Usually. It starts out simple, High-C or Hawaiian Punch in a big bowl with some ice and maybe some lemonade to kick it up a bit. If the parents don't leave we'll keep drinking it, and nothing happens. But if they leave..."

"Somebody would add some alcohol."

Danielle nodded. "Usually rum or vodka, but sometimes whiskey or something else. One time someone put Everclear in the punch, and everyone was so sick they couldn't go home for hours. I wasn't at that party, but heard about it at school the next day."

"What happens after that?"

"Nothing much, at least for a bit," Danielle said. "But after a few drinks a boy asked me to go off with him. We settled on a blanket, and at first we didn't do except drink and feel each other up a bit. But after another drink or two—I guess I drank to get my courage up—we took off our clothes."

"And then you would do it?"

"Usually," Danielle said. "That party at Jocelyn's for instance. Everyone had beach towels, and after I got my clothes off, Kevin Thompson felt me up, dropped a few kisses here and there—I think that was his idea of foreplay—and pretty soon he'd get between my legs."

"And you didn't use any form of protection," Dr. Wayland said. "Why was that?"

"Well the boys hated rubbers, said it was like taking a shower in a raincoat. I didn't care for them either, they were so slick, and you get so you really like how it feels without them."

"What about other methods?"

"I needed my parent's permission."

"And you weren't going to ask for that because that would tell your parents what you were doing."

Danielle nodded. "I wouldn't be their sweet, innocent little girl." She looked down, clasping her hands, squeezing them until the ends of her fingers turned white. "I just couldn't do that to my mother," she continued in a near-whisper. "She used to brag about me to her friends! I was always the perfect one, much better than my sister. Hah! If they only knew! But I had perfect conduct, perfect clothes and hair, perfect friends—I was a member of the most popular clique—and I had grades good enough I wouldn't have to go to a Community College like my sister, but could go directly to Berkley, or maybe even USC. I couldn't spoil that image! I couldn't hurt her that way!"

Dr. Wayland rested her elbows on her desk. "When did you start going to these parties?"

"When I was 14, actually about four months after I turned 14. All of the most popular girls were doing it, and I wanted to be part of that group. They were dating all of the good-looking boys, and they were what you wanted to be part of."

"Did they get good grades?"

"Of course! They were always getting A's and A+'s. There were even rumors that some of them didn't have to crack a book to get their grades, either."

"You mean they were intimate with their teachers."

"Yeah, and a couple of those teachers were women! That's like so yuck! I mean gross to the max; some of those women were old! They had wrinkles and everything!"

Dr. Wayland cleared her throat. "It seems to me," she said, "that you were living to meet the expectations of other people. You weren't living for yourself."

"I was not, I—"

"You wanted in with the most popular girls, so you did what you had to do. You wanted to be perfect in your mother's eyes, so you did what you had to do there, not telling her about something that she needed to know about."

"I didn't have to tell them. Nobody could tell them."

"They were responsible for you."

"No, not in California. That's the law. I looked it up."

"Then it's a bad law," Dr. Wayland said. "It was probably passed with the best of intentions, too." She stirred through the papers on her desk.

"All right, we're finished here. If you ever need to talk about something, anything you wouldn't want to bring up with your family, call me."

"I thought you were going to say I was a very confused girl," Danielle said after a few seconds. "Isn't that how these things are supposed to go? That's what some of my friends were told when they complained about ... you know."

"You're not a confused girl," Dr. Wayland said. "You were caught in a sick culture, and you were trying to be everything to everybody. One of the things that'll you'll have to do in the next couple of years is set your own goals and priorities in life.

"You're here, now, not back in California. The rules are different here, as you'll learn. One of the things I'll tell you is that you're at that age where you have to begin taking responsibility for yourself. You can't be what others want you to be, which is often a reflection of themselves. You have to stand on your own feet."

"What does that mean?" Danielle asked. "I've heard people tell me that before. Does it mean—"

"What do you want to do?" Dr. Wayland asked, interrupting her. "Do you want to be a doctor? Or go into business? Or maybe the sciences? I saw some of your preliminary tests, and you're a bright girl, very smart, and there are a lot of things you could do."

"Science is for geeks."

Dr. Wayland smiled. "So ... I'm a geek? You need to study the sciences if you want to go into medicine. You are a long way from those girls you knew back in California. You don't have to be bound by what they thought."

"But—"

"What were the classes that interested you? Not what you got good grades in, but what did you cover that you later watched more of on TV, or even read a book about?"

"Um, history stuff," Danielle said. "And I liked reading about how other people lived. The teachers liked that when they found out, and encouraged me. If everything's different here, will I still get a chance to do that?"

"We have all of history open before us," Dr. Wayland said. "And if you show an aptitude in something, the teachers will encourage it."

"Even if I say things that aren't politically correct?"

"Even if," Dr. Wayland said. "You have to learn to think for yourself. In the next few weeks you'll get a chance very few people get back where you come from. I would advise you to do some thinking. See what's out there, find what you like to do. And when you do, the teachers will help you do it."

Danielle was going to say something, but she took in the doctor's expression. The doctor, she decided, was honestly trying to help her, and she wasn't being put down, either. She remembered a school counselor she'd gone to, the first time she'd gotten pregnant, and how the counselor had made her feel so stupid. Dr. Wayland didn't seem that way.

"I'll do some thinking," she said at last. "I don't know where to start, though."

"There are some educational channels on TV," the doctor said. "Talk with your aunt; I'm sure she could suggest a few things. And if you meet other adults, talk to them, ask them what they do."

Dr. Wayland drew a notepad over and scribbled something. "I'll set up an appointment for you for next month. In the meantime, like I said, if you need someone to talk to, call me. Here's my number."

"Are you doing this because you're a doctor?"

"I became a doctor because I wanted to help people who were hurting."

That explanation made sense. Danielle smiled. "I'll talk to you after a bit."

Aunt Jessica was waiting for her, and they rode home talking about minor things. When she got home, Danielle went into the backyard. A hedge marked the back of the property. The backyard was open, except for some trees. She settled back against one. The sun was still well up in the sky, and it hit her directly.

She edged her skirt up almost to her hips, and unbuttoned most of her blouse. She did all of her best thinking when she was tanning. She didn't think Jenny lay out, but quite a few people were tanned, some of them rather heavily. She'd have to see about getting some sunscreen so she didn't burn.

Dr. Wayland was only trying to help, and she wasn't making any judgments. Danielle had seen enough school counselors who did just that to be suspicious of any offer of help. They were always judging you, telling you how you'd failed to conform to whatever they'd learned in school, and laying a pretty hard guilt trip on you. But all Dr. Wayland had done was listen, give her some encouragement, and remind her that her future had yet to be written.

She knew the future of those girls back in Tiburon. They'd go to college, meet the right boy, and marry him. They'd become 'Mrs. So-and-so', wife of the doctor, lawyer, businessman, or politician. They'd have one or two kids, and settle into being the perfect wife and hostess. Some would drink because of the boredom of their lives, others would take up drugs, always being careful to hide that part of themselves from the world. They'd see their friends, the same ones they'd known in high school, and gradually fade from view.

What did she want to do? Doctor? Something else? She wasn't sure. She remembered something her favorite teacher had said—it was ironic that the woman taught in 8th Grade, not high school—"Gather the facts before you decide." If Dr. Wayland was right, she was going to have some time to 'gather the facts'.

She shifted slightly against the tree and relaxed. This might be the only time she had to get some sun. She'd better make the most of it.

-------

That Saturday Jenny and her boyfriend took her to an afternoon concert in the park. As they were getting ready—Jenny was fixing a picnic lunch—she got a chance to look at her cousin's boyfriend.

There was nothing really spectacular about him. He didn't have a lean, muscular body, but he wasn't fat, either. He was wearing a red short-sleeved shirt and dark pants; she thought he'd look better in jeans, at least for a picnic. He had dark hair, and a cowlick that kept trying to escape down his forehead.

She wondered what Jenny saw in him. She did note that they were always touching, and she wondered if that meant they were active. She'd have to ask her, and ask her what she was doing for protection. She wondered if Aunt Jessica knew, and if she should drop some hints. Maybe just to get back at Jenny.

"You'll like this concert," Jenny said as she made some potato salad. "It's in the middle of the park, and the performers used the bandstand. People lie around on blankets, especially on a day like today, and just enjoy the weather and music.

"A bandstand?" Danielle tried not to roll her eyes; a bandstand in the middle of the town? How positively old-fashioned. She'd seen it when they'd visited the park the day she'd arrived, and it looked like something out of a history book, or that musical she liked on TV back home, the one with all of the trombones and set in 1912 or so.

"Who's playing?" she asked.

"A number of acts, all local," Jenny said. "We don't get the well-known singers, we're too far from Center."

"I don't know. Back where I come from concerts are big affairs, with big-name bands and acts. I've been to a couple, Britney Spears, and Shania Twain."

"Oh? Who are they?"

"Singers, really good singers," she said at last. She didn't tell her friends at school, but she'd liked Shania better. Britney had seemed too trampy; she'd been blessed with looks and talent, but seemed to take them for granted. Shania, she knew, had been a nobody, a teenager who had to raise her brother and sister. She'd worked hard, made the most of her talent, and become a big star.

Her friends idolized Britney Spears, and when she accompanied them she jumped up and down and screamed like they did, but was secretly more interested in watching everyone else.

"Like I said, we're too far from Center to get the big name acts." Jenny finished the potato salad and started on sandwiches. "Why don't you make some lemonade. We don't need much."

"Lemonade." Danielle searched the refrigerator for frozen concentrate. Finally she saw a powder: lemonade mix. She poured that into a pitcher, added ice and water, and stirred. After a taste she added some sugar.

"The concert will be local groups," Jenny said. "Some of them are pretty good, others..." She wiggled her hand ambivalently. "I've gone to school with a couple of the kids, and they're all right, no great shakes, but all right."

Danielle finished the lemonade—it tasted better the second time—and helped Jenny fit everything into a basket. Then, after straightening up the kitchen, they collected Jenny's boyfriend and took the trolley to the park.

There were a lot of people sitting on blankets on the grass, and older people sitting on the few benches. Everyone had either brought food, or bought it from vendors on the edge of the park. The backdrop, looking out over the edge of the cliff toward the ocean, was certainly dramatic. Act followed act. Jenny was right: some were ... adequate. Several of those who played were actually pretty good, a far cry from the off-key renditions she'd thought she'd hear. The final act, though...

She'd never liked classical guitar. She'd heard it on the radio once on some station that her father liked, and didn't care for all of the strumming and picking. She wanted words she could sing along to. But this young man ... He was missing the thumb and index finger on his right hand, and yet he picked rather than strummed. And his music was complex. She couldn't recognize half of what he did, but he made the music sail along, up and down, constantly repeating himself, but with differences. She leaned forward, trying to keep up, but was lost as he seemed to do variations on top of other variations of simple tunes. It was like he took flight, feeding off the crowd, soaring far above the other musicians, and taking her along with him.

Here was somebody who had taken his talent as far as he could. Danielle knew she wasn't a musician; she'd tried it in grade school, and it was one of the few things she'd ever failed at. But she could recognize talent when she saw it. And all of the way home she kept humming bits and pieces of his music.

"We'll see you later," Jenny said when they got home and put the picnic things away.

"Oh? Where are you going?"

"Somebody from school is throwing a pool party, and Brad and I are going."

"A 'pool party'?"

"That's just what we call it."

"Do you think I could... ?" She wanted to get out of the house, meet new people, and start making friends.

"Tag along?" Jenny smiled and shook her head. "This'll probably be like some of those parties you told me about where you went to school."

They couldn't be doing that, Danielle thought. She must mean the parties where everyone stood around, drank a little, and talked. Those parties had been boring, but probably a lot better for her than the others she'd gone to. She unconsciously ran her fingers over her tummy, remembering.

"Well, have fun. See you when you get back."

"Oh, I doubt it. We'll be back late." She waved, and the two of them headed up the street toward the trolley stop. Watching them, Danielle was struck by how they weren't carrying any swimming suits. She'd have to ask Jenny about that some time.

Feeling a little at loose ends, Danielle went down to the kitchen to get some juice. Aunt Jessica and Uncle Jack were dressed, and were clearly about to go out.

"You're going to a party, too?" Danielle asked.

"Our next door neighbor is having a barbecue," Uncle Jack said. "Will you be all right alone tonight? You can come if you want."

"I'll watch some TV or something," Danielle said. "I wish they'd get me in a school. I want to meet people, and make some new friends."

"On Monday we'll get the results of the placement exams," Aunt Jessica said. "And then we can get you into a school." She smiled, clearly thinking of something. "Jack's right. Why don't you come along? You probably won't be the only teenager there, but even if you are, there is bound to be interesting people to talk to."

Danielle thought about that. Her aunt and uncle were trusting her on her own. She wouldn't be expected to stand next to them the entire party. That was something her father had never quite seemed comfortable with. Of course she didn't have any friends to invite over, but that hardly mattered. But still...

"Sure, why not? It could be interesting."

Danielle had expected the barbecue to be filled with a lot of people Aunt Jessica's age. There were a few, but at least half of the people had to be in their 20s. She got a cup of punch—she tasted it carefully to see if it was spiked—and circulated.

An older man with white hair and a bald spot was tending the grill—he had an apron that said 'Kiss the Engineer'—and he was slathering sauce on a mass of spare ribs. A woman, quite likely his wife, was doing a dry rub on a pan full of pork chops. A younger couple stood next to them, talking earnestly while serving drinks.

Danielle drifted over to see what they were talking about. The young man was talking with the cook about microwaves, relay points, and other geek stuff. The young woman was discussing the finer points of the rub the woman was applying. Danielle smiled politely when they glanced at her, and edged away.

On the corner of the patio an older man with a tanned and lined face was sitting on a rock wall. He was wearing a khaki shirt and slacks, and was talking with a slender young man. " ... so we had to find a place for the damned relay. Judy thought we could disguise it as a bush, you know, fake fronds and so on."

"I doubt if that'd work," the young man said. "They're a hunter-gatherer tribe, and the women will examine every plant near the village. What did you do?"

"Julian came up with the idea of a hollowed out log," the older man said. "Of course that didn't last long. We'd forgotten the need for firewood."

"You could have used a fake rock," Danielle said, interjecting herself into the conversation. "If you didn't want to use foam, you could cast one out of concrete."

The two men looked at her for a few seconds, and then the older man put down his drink and fished a notebook out of his pocket. "Damn," he said, shaking his head. "That's one of those ideas that's so obvious I don't know why none of us thought of it." He made a scribbled note before putting the notebook away.

"But not so obvious when you're on an alt," the younger man said. "You just don't notice rocks." He chuckled. "And neither do the natives, not if the rock is big enough."

"They might be suspicious of a rock that hadn't been there the day before," Danielle went on, encouraged that they hadn't rejected her idea or suggested she mind her own business. "So you bury it, at least partway, and cover it with leaves or fronds or, well, whatever."

"I'm Roger Peters," the older man said, holding out his hand. "And this sly devil next to me is George Sanderson."

"Danielle Tyler," she replied. "I'm staying with my Aunt Jessica and Uncle Jack. You mentioned something. Alt? What's that?"

The two men looked at each other. "Oh," Roger said. "It's shorthand for Alternate. We were studying a particular tribe in the Middle Sea area. They were just adopting agriculture, and we wanted to see what they were doing, and which crops they adopted."

"We were also interested in just how and why they got started," George added. "Some colonies of ants have domesticated rice, and there was some speculation that there was a similar dynamic at work here."

"Kevin Bronson and his damned 'inevitable forces of history' nonsense," Roger said. "He's as bad as that chap who proposed changes in the historical timeline between Egypt, Crete, and Anatolia, and got everyone confused about the end of the Bronze Age."

"It took us 12 years to sort that out," George said, "and 20 trips to a variety of alts to collect the data. Some of the people at the University still haven't changed their minds."

"They will," Roger said. "I've got funding to go to one of the Jerusalems of Solomon."

That much Danielle knew. "So they've identified one."

Both men nodded. "We just had to find a branched timeline that had an exit there," Roger said. "That took two years, and it wasn't until Dr. Bergeron got interested in the subject that we finally made progress. He somehow calculated what the parameters of that timeline should be, and even took a stab at defining the split."

"Brilliant man," George nodded. "I met him last year. Made the mistake of going up against him in a basketball pool."

Roger laughed. "I think I heard about that. He skunked everyone."

"He knows his basketball, and how to spot talent. Good-looking wife, too."

"Her I haven't met."

"Bet you've seen her, though."

Roger shook his head. "Not likely. I'd have remembered."

"She wins the match and combat shooting competitions at the Center Cup each year. They've actually named the trophy after her, and there's talk that they won't let her compete because she's too good."

"You mean..." Roger shook his head. "Yeah, I know who you mean. You're right, real good looking, a knock-out, actually."

"And she works for the Security Commission in some capacity."

"Please tell me that she's a receptionist."

"Rumor is that she's either an operative, or has been one in the past. You know Tony Aiken, don't you?"

"Department of Geosciences. Met him a couple of times."

"Mrs. Bergeron pulled his fanny out of a bad spot. This was, oh, 10 years ago or so. Tony was on an alt-Crete studying the Thera eruption. His study team boss didn't want to leave, and actually proposed making the journey to the island to study the eruption up close."

Roger snorted. "That's like wanting to stand next to an atom bomb to watch it blow."

"Thera was the second largest volcanic eruption we have human eyewitnesses to," George told Danielle. The crater is nearly eight miles across, and the tidal wave absolutely wrecked the civilizations in the Aegean, especially on Crete.

"We had a team on Crete to document the eruption, and managed to plant sensors on the island of Thera in the weeks before it blew. Tony told me it lit off a few weeks before they expected it."

"That's the trouble with natural phenomena," Roger said. "They don't happen the same across all alternates."

"The team had split up," George said. "The Security Commission operatives pulled the ones they could out, but they didn't get everyone. Tony said this Mrs. Bergeron shoved him through the gate as the water surged inland. The water actually came through the gate, and would have dragged both Tony and her back, but a technician cut the main power feed with an axe and forced the gate to close."

"A little closer than I would have liked," Roger said. "They do have tape and film of the event, though, and they were able to recover that."

"That reminds me," Danielle said. "I was watching some shows on TV. Were those shot in the ... alternates."

"We had to fund our studies somehow, and the University agreed to release the tapes," Roger said, while George nodded. "I spent most of a year helping put those tapes together in a coherent way."

"I thought they were fascinating," Danielle said. "When I lived in Tiburon, back on the other side of the gate, I saw things like that, but it was clear they used actors. They got everything wrong, and it bothered me. It was refreshing to see these."

"I saw some recreations like that years ago," George said. "We got to view tapes brought in from Zero Phase." He chuckled. "What a farce. They had members of the Athenian Assembly during the Peloponnesian War wearing togas, for crying out loud. We knew we could do better, but it took nearly two years to get permission from the Project Security Commission. Even then they had so many cut-outs and safe-guards I didn't think we'd get them."

George drew back slightly. "You said Tiburon. In Zero Phase?" Danielle nodded. "Are you a student? Or ... what?"

"High school," Danielle said. "But I've been fascinated by these other cultures for as long as I can remember."

The two men looked at each other again. Roger tossed off his drink. "I'll leave you to it, George," he said, and walked off stiffly.

"What's bothering him?" Danielle asked, watching him leave.

"He had trouble with a recent immigrant," George said. "The laws are different here, and these immigrants didn't understand that. Things escalated way beyond what they should have, and the Security Commission had to get involved. I can't go into any more detail, but Roger's been cautious around newcomers ever since, and with good reason.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize..."

"No need to fret. So you're a newcomer. Have you had a chance to look around? What do you think of the place?"

"My cousin took me to a concert in the park earlier today," Danielle said. She recounted what she'd thought of the last act, and a few things about the town. "The town seems familiar, somehow, and yet strange, too."

"Oh? In what ways?"

"It feels, I don't know why, but comfortable as well as different."

"That's because Valley's End is one of the original towns built in Three Valleys," George said. "I think everyone in the America on the other side of the gate half-remembers a time and a place like this."

"That could explain it," Danielle said. "But I mean what I said, I've been fascinated by other cultures for as long as I can remember. My Uncle Jack said I should talk to some people about learning more. For example, what is it you do, besides edit films?"

George smiled. "You understand the idea of alternate histories, don't you?"

"Aunt Jessica said something about that, something about how history didn't come out the way it did for us, or something like that."

"That's more or less the idea. I'm part of a program that examines some of these alternates and try to draw lessons from them. But because the river of history went down another channel, we can't always learn much from a single past, so we have to look at a lot of them.

"A good example is one some colleagues started working on last year. We found this Roman time when Julius Caesar was only wounded, not killed. So far they've been to some 15 alternates trying to see if there was any particular pattern to what happened after the assassination and coup failed. They'll probably be doing that for years. They'll have to be very careful. The Roman world wasn't exactly safe. There were bandits and feuds, not to mention the occasional civil war."

"That sounds pretty dangerous," Danielle said.

"It has its risks," George said. "The Security Commission has been pretty good at protecting us, and when one of our teams got in a pickle—they'd been arrested by a local governor—the Commission sent people in and got them out."

"I'd love to hear about that."

"I wouldn't have their job for all of the money in the world," George said. "When trouble shows up on one of the alts, the best thing to do is get out of there. Those people voluntarily go into dangerous situations."

"Aunt Jessica didn't say much about any of that."

"She should have. Your uncle and aunt are prominent researchers in the historical field. Your aunt specializes in Renaissance Italy, while your Uncle is considered one of the authorities on Colonial America."

"They never said a thing to me," Danielle said. "So if I wanted to learn more, what should I do? Bug them?"

"That'd be a start," George said. "No, you need to get really good grades in history and writing. Then, when you get to college, you should..."

He spent the next 20 minutes talking about what college courses she should take, and what else she should do while in school. By the time he finished her head was spinning. She'd have to write this all down as soon as she could so she didn't forget.

"I'll tell you what," George said. "I know your aunt and uncle. If you have any questions, have them drop me a line and I'll see what I can do. And if you get your grades up, I'm always looking for summer interns. You don't go anywhere, but you get to help sort and catalogue the material from the alts."

"That does sound interesting. Thanks."

"Sure. It's never too early to start learning the things you'd need to know."

He looked across the patio. "Ah, enough talk. The food line has opened." He got to his feet and offered her his arm. Danielle gave him a polite good-bye when she saw Uncle Jack beckoning to her. She had to cut through the line to reach him.

"Having a good time?" Uncle Jack asked.

"Better than I thought I would," Danielle replied. Her stomach rumbled and she put her hand on it. "Those ribs smell delicious. They're awfully fattening, though, so maybe—"

"Our hosts would be offended if you didn't try them," Uncle Jack said. "You'll have to try at least one with the dry rub as well as one with the sauce. Phil and Marty have this on-going argument about who makes the better ribs. So do most of their neighbors, and now you'll have to have an opinion."

"I'm not sure I could eat them," Danielle said. "It's been years since I had ribs. Too much fat and cholesterol."

"We should always watch what we eat," Uncle Jack said, "but one or two ribs won't be enough to hurt. And of course if you're hungry afterwards, you can always lick your fingers."

Danielle laughed. When her uncle put it that way she couldn't say no. "I think I have a sudden hankering for ribs."



-------

Chapter 4


On Sunday morning Danielle woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. After tossing and turning, she finally got her robe and slippers and padded down to the study. She clicked through a few programs on TV that didn't seem to make any sense, but soon found a movie that looked interesting. From a few bits of dialogue she decided it was a romance set in the early days of The Project.

The kissing didn't look faked and about halfway through the movie she caught a glimpse of an absolutely gorgeous guy wading out of a river. The water glistened off of his bare skin, and his pants clung to his frame as if they'd been painted on. The camera followed him, and she couldn't help but notice how his pants were molded to his behind.

He met a woman, and as shadows lengthened around them, they lay on a blanket kissing and caressing each other. As the camera panned back Danielle caught a distinct view of the woman's breast just before the man's lips descended on it. Then the picture slowly faded out, to be replaced by the credits.

She felt hot and her throat was parched. After her racing pulse slowed, she got up to get a drink of water. That was something that back home might have appeared on Showtime late at night. She stopped that train of thought. She should think of here as home, now, not back in Tiburon.

She wasn't sure why, but she felt safer here in—she had to think to remember the name of the town—Valley's End, that was it, than she ever had in Tiburon. She knew, back home, that there was crime, and people got hurt. One of the boys in school had been beaten up by a gang of punks who'd come into town looking for trouble. They'd tried to rape a girl, too, but that got stopped by the police. For some reason the boys got off, and she couldn't remember why.

Here ... she couldn't remember seeing any police, but when they'd been walking to the concert Jenny had casually let slip something about the neighbors. Danielle had looked around, and finally began to see just how many people were always out in their yards, or doing something, constantly watching what was going on.

It reminded her of the stories her grandmother had told about growing up in the 50s. Kids would play outside all day, and though their parents were watching, they didn't try to supervise, or organize what the kids were doing. Kids could run around and be kids. It looked like the same thing was going on here in Valley's End.

The day before she'd seen a bunch of kids playing around some box in a yard. It seemed to involve pirates, and they even had toy guns, something she couldn't remember seeing in stores back in Tiburon. That would have gotten the anti-gun people up in arms in a hurry, and there would have been lawsuits, court cases, and endless articles in the paper. Here there'd been a lot of yelling and running around as everyone had fun.

"Dr. Wayland said I'll have to take more responsibility for things," she said to herself as she carried a glass of water back to the study. "I'll have to make my own decisions. Looks like I'm going to have to."

When she clicked around the channels again—there didn't seem to be any church programs—she found one of those history programs she liked. This was set in some place in the Middle East, Babylon, or some place like that. Having heard Roger and George, she looked for the little things. She saw dirt and the way people were dressed: there was casual nudity here and there, a young woman was nursing a baby—you wouldn't see that on Showtime or HBO because the prudes thought breasts were for sex, not feeding—and some of the smallest kids were totally naked. That all made sense, when you thought about it. If the people here could go back 18,000 years in time, or across time, or whatever it was they did, then they could probably stop at some of the times in between.

"Doing that could be interesting," she said. She thought about studying some of those other cultures. She'd liked doing that when she was in school in Tiburon. The teachers had let her, saying that she would learn to appreciate how their values were just as good as hers. When she'd read about a girl being whipped in public because she'd gone out with a boy her parents didn't like, and she'd held his hand, she had some doubts. How could that be the equal of what happened in America? She wondered if the teacher deliberately ignored those facts that were inconvenient. She suspected the latter. As far as she was concerned, too much of that went on in the schools in Tiburon, but you got in trouble if you said anything about it.

Another program followed; this one was set in Greece, and seemed to be one of the Greek plays filmed on a set that looked like the pictures of Greek theaters she'd seen. She did know the difference between a toga—that was Roman—and a peplos—that was Greek—and was gratified to see that the producers got it right. Most of the audience seemed to be men, though, which made her wonder where the women were. Some of the men were casually nude—not all of them were gorgeous hunks—and that told her this wasn't a staged play of some kind. The camera didn't linger on the nudity, but didn't pass it up, either.

She must have fallen asleep or something about then. She had a weird dream where she was dressed in something white and ankle-length, and was running a camera while people, clothed in a mélange of costumes that she'd seen on TV, including that man wading out of the water, did something she wasn't supposed to see. Just about the time she thought it would make sense, Aunt Jessica shook her awake.

"You need to go upstairs and get dressed," Aunt Jessica said.

Danielle rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. "Where are we going?"

"Church," Aunt Jessica said. "Hurry up, we need to leave in a few minutes if we want to get good seats. And let me see what you're going to wear."

Danielle went back to her room and changed. Nobody went to church back in Tiburon. Oh, sure the poor people did, and some of the middle class who'd moved there from the Bible Belt, but people she knew didn't really go to church. Sundays were for lounging around, shopping, and watching football.

She finished dressing, pinned her hair up—she'd noticed that a lot of the women had long hair—and presented herself for inspection.

"Not bad," Aunt Jessica said. "All right, come along."

"Where's Jenny?"

"She's going to church with Brad's family," her aunt said. She grinned. "Jenny's never done that before, which is why I think she's serious about this boy."

Danielle felt like a raft being towed along behind a larger boat. Church was vaguely familiar. They sang a few hymns, the minister read from the Bible and gave a sermon, and everyone prayed a couple of times.

When they got home Aunt Jessica dragged her into the kitchen. "We need to get lunch on the table," she said. "This won't be like what you're used to in Tiburon. Sunday lunch is a big meal here, not sandwiches hurriedly made while people rush off somewhere."

Danielle did as she was told. After a lunch of fried chicken, salad, and iced tea, they watched TV for a bit—no football—before Aunt Jessica finally let her go.

Danielle went upstairs to change, and then went for a walk. She wanted to get out and about, with no parents and nobody checking on her. For some reason she mentioned where she was going to Aunt Jessica first, who nodded her approval.

She headed back downtown. She didn't have any money—she'd have to get a job so she could earn some—so she couldn't buy anything, but she could window shop and go to the park. There were others walking along the pathways, and here and there a few kids played. This all looked familiar, and then it hit her: in that movie with the trombones, people had gone to the park to just walk, socialize, and enjoy the fresh air.

This seems old-fashioned, she thought, but kind of fun. She kept a cautious eye out. She knew that drug-users lurked in parks, along with perverts trying to lure young boys or girls into the bushes. She didn't see any of that here, but she probably didn't know what to look for. There were plenty of people around, though, which probably helped keep the perverts and druggies away, at least during the day. She did see what she thought was a policeman—he was a rugged looking man in a khaki uniform—but he didn't seem menacing, and he didn't even have a gun. She was alone, though, and she didn't know if that was against the law, or attracted the wrong kind of attention, or what. She decided it was best to stay away from him. He was a man, and she'd read of men posing as police officers in San Francisco to lure young kids away.

After a couple of hours her feet began to hurt, so she returned home. Her aunt and uncle were both in the den, reading, but only nodded when she came in. She went up to her room, and surprised herself by falling asleep.

-------

On Monday she and Aunt Jessica went to Midtown to meet with the people who had graded her tests. She took a window seat on the tram, staring at the scenery. The sides of the valley were covered with houses, each group set off from the others with trees. She couldn't see any roads, but there were plenty of paths, and not a few bicycles.

She'd expected the tram to run straight, but they hugged the edge of the valley, occasionally climbing over some obstruction rather than cutting onto the flat ground to go around it. She finally asked Aunt Jessica about that.

"All of the land in the middle is for growing crops," Aunt Jessica replied. "The only development allowed there are dikes to channel the water, and access lanes to get the harvesters to the crops."

"The towns were built where it's flat."

"They had to be built somewhere, but after the first couple of years it was decided that everything new had to be built on the side of the valley." Aunt Jessica pointed at a draw they were passing. "You can see some of that here."

It was a small valley in its own right, but the floor wasn't flat. Houses were built up the slope, but there was a small cluster of shops along the floor. There were trees everywhere, but no power or phone lines. It reminded her of some of the places people lived in Southern California, only without the roads.

They pulled in to Midtown, and the platform quickly filled as people hurried off. Aunt Jessica must have flown on an airliner or something because she waited until most of the people were off before getting up. When they did step out onto the platform, her aunt set off in a different direction than before.

Their destination was a building that had an air of having been there a while. It was a two-story building made of dark concrete. There were steps leading up the front, and a flag she couldn't quite make out waving from a pole on the roof. There were trees around the building, and no parking lot.

Her aunt asked directions from a woman in the lobby, and in a couple of minutes they were seated in an office. A woman in a peach dress that did nothing for her complexion, a Mrs. Holcomb, leafed through the test results. When she looked up her fleshy face was split by a smile.

"Good news. Because she has immigrant status, Danielle won't be remanded to middle-school level."

"That might not have been appropriate, given the situation by which she came to us," Aunt Jessica said.

Mrs. Holcomb nodded. "I see that, and factored that into what we decided."

"And that is?"

Danielle kept silent, her hands clasped together, twisting slightly from the tension. She'd worn one of her school uniforms, the white blouse with the black pleated skirt. It was the same combination she'd seen Jenny wearing earlier that morning.

"We have a class starting today here in Midtown. These are the children of people from outside Three Valleys, so don't share our ... perspective ... on certain things."

"What are their age groups?"

"Here's where we're lucky," Mrs. Holcomb said. She closed the folder with the test results and added it to the pile on the end of her desk. "There are 20 kids, and they're all 15 and 16. Your niece will fit right in with them."

"Where are they from?"

"Mostly Center, though one boy comes from a town about 200 miles from Center. Their parents are here to work on various technical projects, something to do with the relay stations or satellite tracking. I'm not really clear on that. But they all have different educational needs, so your niece should have no trouble with the curriculum.

"Anyway," she said as she stood, "we could get her over there right now, get the last of the paperwork done, and get her started in class before lunch." She looked at the clock on the wall. "Well, her classes would start after lunch. I'm afraid that's the best we can do."

"I think that'll work out just fine," Aunt Jessica said. "What about getting home? She doesn't know her way around, and she doesn't have any money."

"We'll arrange a school pass for the trolley," Mrs. Holcomb replied. "We'll have it waiting for her in the school offices. You'll have to meet her when she returns to Valley's End. Shall we go?"

The school was next to the tram station, but a creek separated it from the rest of the town. It was a single story U-shaped building, with a lawn in the middle. Mrs. Holcomb introduced Danielle to the staff, and left her in their hands. They gave her still more paperwork to fill out, but finally they showed her to her locker.

Aunt Jessica gave her a hug after they'd bought Danielle's books. "I'll see you at the station later this afternoon," she said.

"I'll be there," Danielle replied. Her stomach was turning flip-flops. Things had been changing so fast in the last week that she felt totally lost. She tried to put a positive spin on things. She had a chance to make new friends, learn new things, and everything connected with a school.

The Girls Counselor checked her watch, and then led Danielle down the hall to the left. They paused outside a classroom as a bell rang. A handful of students filed past, everyone talking and ignoring the pair.

After the other students were settled, the Counselor led her to a seat in the back of the class. "Class," she said, and everyone turned to look at her. "We have a new student today. This is Danielle." She nodded, and Danielle gave a small wave.

"Where are you from?" the teacher asked.

"Tiburon," Danielle replied.

"That's in Zero Phase," the Counselor added. Several of the kids 'oohed' at that. "Danielle is staying with family members. Be sure to give her a big welcome." The Counselor smiled at the teacher and left.

"We'll get to introductions later," the teacher said. "In the meantime, we have a few things to do. Do you have your textbook?" When Danielle nodded, the teacher smiled. "Good. This is English Composition, probably one of the easier things you'll discover here at school."

The room burst into laughter. The teacher waited for it to die down, and then continued. "To pass the course, you have to write an essay. That's the final. In the meantime we have other things to write. We're going to start by learning how to critique essays by looking at examples in the textbook."

The next few minutes seemed to drag. Danielle thought learning to critique an essay would be boring, but somehow the teacher kept it lively, even making fun of some of the sentences and the images they invoked. The bell rang, cutting off one of the teacher's comments.

"There's a one-page essay on my desk," the teacher said as the students began gathering their things. "Please write a critique for our next class. And yes, you can mark up the copy."

One of the girls planted herself next to Danielle's desk. "I'm Robin," she said. "Are you really from Zero Phase?" The girl had a round face, a round body, and frizzy brown hair that seemed to emphasize her round face.

"Apparently," Devlin said. "My parents live there, but I'm staying with my aunt and uncle. How did it get the name Zero Phase?"

"It's an old computer joke," Robin said. "You don't start counting at one, you start at zero. At least that's what my Dad says. I had a teacher back in Center say that in any hierarchy you have a starting point, and because each variation is given a number, zero is the only proper starting point."

"That sounds like your father's version, only dressed up in fancier words."

"It does, doesn't it. What's your next class?"

"Math," Danielle said after she pulled out her schedule. "Algebra. Then I have History."

"I've got geometry next," Robin said, "and History after that. I'll see you in History."

They had a break after History, and spent it on the terrace outside. The sky was blue, the breeze coming from the mountains to the east was warm, and there was the definite smell of Spring in the air.

"I love days like this," Robin said. "It's April in Center right now, and everyone's still wearing coats. That's only natural because we're so close to the ice sheet."

"Ice sheet? My aunt said something about it."

"Have you ever seen it?"

"Only on TV." She knew what Aunt Jessica had said, but she wanted to hear it from somebody else. "I thought it was too far away to affect the temperature."

Robin waved her hand vaguely toward the north. "You know we're in the middle of an ice age, right? I think it's the Permian or something, I was never quite clear on that, and it doesn't really matter. Anyway, the main ice sheet over North America is only about 80 or a hundred miles from Center. That makes the winters there longer, of course, and the summers cooler. That's why I was so glad when my Dad got transferred to Three Valleys. I knew it was going to be warm, but it wasn't going to be a really bad heat like you'd get in the desert. Of course it's warmer in Seaside, but it has to be because they walk around all the time without any clothes on, but this is nice enough."

"They're naked?"

"Apparently all of the nudists the Project recruited settled in Seaside," Robin said. "They'd have to live some place warm, and there was some religious group that settled in the Caribbean islands that goes around partially naked. They were here first, so they got their choice of where to live."

"A religious group that's partly naked?" Danielle shook her head. "That seems weird."

"Oh, they aren't completely naked," Robin said. "I understand the girls wear these little skirts, and guys wear tight shorts or something. Everyone's topless, though, men and women."

"Easier for the guys."

"Well, true. I might be willing to go there. They have several resorts in the islands, and people vacation there all of the time, especially now that they have airline service to some of the faraway places.

"Anyway, that meant the nudists had to live somewhere else, and so they moved to Seaside." She gave Danielle an impish smile. "I wouldn't mind visiting the place some time, just to see what it was like."

"If we did, they'd probably make us take off our clothes, too," Danielle said.

"Which is why I'd never really do it. But all of those guys? Yum. Talk about getting an eyeful. I'd love that."

"They're probably not all gorgeous hunks," Danielle said, remembering the pictures of those nude men watching that Greek play. "There are probably a lot who are overweight and balding."

"True, but there'll be those who aren't, too, and those are the ones I'm interested in. Besides, the ones who are chubby and bald are probably married and off-limits."

"There's no harm in looking," Danielle said, "especially if they flaunt it right out in the open."

"That's true. So anyway, what was it like in this place you're from?"

"A lot like this," Danielle said. "It was warm, though winters could get cool and misty. We lived in..." She spent the rest of the hour answering questions about Tiburon. Some of the things she mentioned Robin had never heard of: iPods, cell phones, and all of the other things kids in her old school took for granted. She promised to give her a better explanation the next day. She'd also ask Aunt Jessica. Maybe she could help with the explanations.

It was nearing dusk when school let out. Danielle stopped at the School Office and got a pass for the trolley. Fortunately Robin waited for her, and they took their time walking to the station, enjoying the setting sun and talking a little about their classes.

"We live in a cul-de-sac just on the other side of Valley's End," Robin said as they settled in their seats at the station. "Most of the people from elsewhere in the Project live there."

"My aunt and uncle live in town," Danielle said. "I can barely find my way around, so if I tried to visit you I'd probably get lost. Too bad I can't use my cell phone."

"Cell phone? You've mentioned that before. What is it?"

"It's a portable telephone," Danielle said. "It works in some areas and not others. It doesn't work here at all."

"Huh. That'd be convenient. I wonder why nobody imports them from Zero Phase."

"I'm not sure," Danielle said. "There are a lot of things I'm used to that I don't see here. Sometimes..." She wanted to say how lonely she felt, but somehow couldn't put it in words.

"Well, there's probably a good reason for it," Robin said. "There are some people who think anything from Zero Phase is better, but I'm not so sure. I've heard all about the crime and smog and other things like that."

"Some things are better," Danielle said, thinking of the kids she knew back in Tiburon. She'd hadn't seen very many cars in Three Valleys, and she still hadn't seen much in the way of crime, at least locally. And then there were the schools, and how boring they were back home, especially compared to what she'd seen in just one day in Three Valleys.

"There are some things that are a whole lot worse there, and I'm glad we don't see them here."

Robin nodded. "I expect we have crime, and being downwind of a factory can be pretty bad. Of course the criminals have to put up with the Security Commission. They're sort of like a super police, and from the stories I've heard, they're pretty good."

"Tough?"

"That's what I've read. They handle crimes that aren't local, and also those crimes like kidnapping and armed robbery. They also police the people who have access to the alternates, too."

"Alternates—oh, the alternate timelines."

"Yeah, normally people don't think of them, but we're all sort of aware of them. The Security Commission has jurisdiction everywhere here in First Phase." She started to say more, but the trolley came right then. "You'll have to tell me more about where you lived," Robin added. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Danielle rode home wrapped in her thoughts. She felt the need to talk things over, but who could she go to? She knew she wasn't supposed to talk about the things she saw in Three Valleys with her parents. Her Aunt Jessica? Perhaps. Things were so different here, but familiar, too. She liked the familiar things, they made her feel ... she wasn't sure what the word was, but a lot of the things she was used to were the same. There were those things that were different, though, that made her feel alone.

The rest of the week passed quickly, though she was unsettled at how much homework the teachers gave her. She surprised herself by getting it all done, too. The teachers in Tiburon hadn't assigned that much, possibly because they knew their students were too busy at night to do the work. Nobody wanted to admit doing much homework, because if you did, the other kids would call you a big brain, and some would beat you up. But now she had to spend two or three hours every night doing problems, working on an essay, or something else for school. Jenny did, too, and they both sat at the dining room table, working.

"I don't have any foreign language class," she told her Aunt on Friday morning.

"There's no need," her Aunt replied. "Everyone in the Project speaks English."

"But what about those two men I met at that barbecue the other night? Don't they have to speak some other language?"

"That's different. To do what they do, they teach you the language you need, whether it's Latin, Greek, or something else."

"Ugh, Latin."

Aunt Jessica smiled. "They don't teach the High Latin like some of the churches use, dear. They teach the Latin that the everyday people use. If you tried to use the High Latin in a Roman city, it'd be like speaking like Shakespeare with 'thees' and 'thous' around here. Now granted, if you were in an Elizabethan England, that'd be all right. But, say you were in downtown Valley's End. That just wouldn't work."

"Oh. So everyone around here speaks English?"

"Everyone," her aunt said, nodding. "When they recruited for the Project back in the 50s and early 60s, they mostly took people from the Midwest and South. There were a few from California, but mostly northern California. The people who were in charge wanted it that way, and they had their reasons."

"Do you know what they were?"

"I could find out, but I have better uses for my time."

"So my learning French back in Tiburon—"

"Wasn't wasted, dear. There are plenty of jobs for people who can translate one language into another. Usually they don't involve speaking the language. The University looks for people who can translate the written word."

She'd had to be satisfied with that. She did ask one of the teachers about a foreign language, and the teacher gave her the same answer as her aunt, but added that students could take Latin or Greek their senior year as a preparation for working on an alternate.

"None of the high schools in Center have classes in Latin," the teacher said, "but they all have a Latin club. Some of the kids there are actually from Roman alternates, and they speak Latin among themselves. If you're interested in learning a new language, it'll have to wait until you go to college in Center."

"I thought there was a college here."

"It's a two-year college with practical degrees. The University has the advanced degrees."

Danielle nodded. Back in Tiburon junior college was a way to learn what she suspected people should have learned in high school, or at least they had when her parents had been teenagers. Here it obviously gave you the education for more advanced jobs in the work place, but not the scholarly degrees you used to get at the University. She thought it was an interesting way of doing things, neatly dividing people into a scholar, a professional level worker, or an ordinary worker. She wondered how the whole system of education back in California had gotten so confused and useless.

The school loaded her up with even more homework for the weekend. She'd started to object, but noticed everyone around her treated it as normal. She swallowed her objection, and spent Friday night and a good part of Saturday morning working on school things. Her head felt absolutely stuffed when she was finished.

Her aunt had mentioned a couple of chores she could do that would help. After she did those she went out to sit in the in the backyard to read and catch some sun.

She'd found a book in the study that intrigued her. It was about Commission Operatives, and some of their adventures on alternate timelines. Some of them were serious, like rescuing people from the middle of a battle, while others were a little more relaxed and easy-going. Every one of them, though, had an edge to it. The operatives were outsiders, and they tried to accomplish their missions without drawing attention to themselves. Sometimes that didn't work out as planned.

"Those are true stories," her aunt said when Danielle mentioned the book to her. "That one you have marked, I helped debrief the operative who did it."

"They just wanted copies of the Roman sacred texts? How hard could that be? You take a camera, creep in at night, and—"

"It was held in the Temple of the Vestal Virgins," her aunt said. "You don't just stroll in with the crowd like you would in a church. Those texts were heavily guarded, and the story doesn't mention that three operatives were killed before they completed their mission."

"Killed? As in..."

"Dead," her aunt said in a flat voice. "It's not like this sort of thing is safe. No, the idiot who did the planning neglected a single critical element: no man is allowed in the temple of the Vestal Virgins. If one is caught there, he is killed at once, no questions asked. A woman made the final attempt, and she succeeded, but it was a close-run thing. She was spotted, but since she was so clearly a woman, they only questioned her."

"She's in several of these stories."

"She and her partner are usually given the most difficult assignments." Aunt Jessica smiled and shook her head. "I felt fortunate to meet her."

"How old is she? What's she like?"

Aunt Jessica made herself comfortable in her chair. "She's young, maybe in her mid-20s, perhaps 23 or 24, and she's quite attractive. At least the men seem to think so."

"How did she get to be an operative? That sounds ... interesting."

"I'm not sure of the details," Aunt Jessica said. "I know she's been with the Commission for several years. The most common story is that she practically grew up there."

"It must be an interesting job to have."

"Perhaps. I know it's dangerous and the standards are really high. Most of the people who apply don't make it."

"She did."

"Yes, she did. To even apply you have to graduate from college."

"I take it that's a hint."

"How's your homework."

"All done, and thanks for asking."

Aunt Jessica laughed. "If you want to get into college you'll have to show more education than just what you get from high school. I'd suggest some books you could read, but I think the best thing, at least for right now, would be to get you to some lectures."

"Lectures? Here in town?"

"That's one of the things people do around here for entertainment. I'll see what's happening, and get you a ticket."

-------

Danielle was glad she didn't know enough boys to have plans for Saturday night. Uncle Jack took her to a lecture, one being given by Roger Peters, the man she'd met at the barbecue. The auditorium was crowded, but there were ceiling fans that kept the heat down. Roger got up, hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, and finally got his slide projector going.

"We were after pictures and accounts of the beginnings of the Greek and Persian War," he said. "We visited six different alternates that were within 30 years of the climactic events of the summer of 480 and 479 BC. This was so we could get oral histories of the events. Those are still being transcribed, but will form part of the written record the University hopes to publish next year.

"We found an alternate where we think we can directly observe the events in question, but they haven't happened yet. Tonight I'll be covering the visual images we made in those locations. Mostly it'll be the preparations."

His first slide was one of the entire team. They were standing on what was clearly an airstrip hacked out of a forest. Most of the team members were men, but there were a few women scattered among them.

"This illustrates the first problem we encountered: the gate for the year in question was on an island just north of South America. We were over 6,000 miles from where we needed to be. It took us a few months, but we constructed a series of airstrips and bases so we could get in position. They'll be used for future work on that alternate.

"It took us two months to stage the equipment and personnel into Greece." The next slide showed an aircraft sitting under camouflage netting in a rugged landscape. "We built a secondary base out of local materials. This base will be demolished in due course, but in such a way as to imply it was done by locals."

"Question?"

"Yes?" He pointed at a man in the second row.

"I was on an expedition into ancient Turkey, shortly after the Romans arrived, and when we demolished our airstrip we added a few seats and made it look like there had been an exercise track there."

"We considered that. We chose to go with total demolition. The hard part was keeping the locals away. People do a lot of wandering in that area."

Roger showed several slides of the secondary base and team members before pausing. "The alternate in question is a year before the Battles of Thermopylae and Salamis. So a lot of what we have is of the events in Athens and Sparta. We did get a camera into Delphi with the Athenian delegation. I'll get to that in a few minutes.

"When we got to Athens they were in the middle of their naval building program. We have some video of that as well as the stills."

The picture was blurry at first, but somebody straightened it out. There were ships being constructed all over the waterfront. There were several ships out in the harbor, each rowing back and forth. A little farther out to sea there were several ships in a group, clearly practicing maneuvers.

"Here are close-ups of the ships," Roger said. "This should end a few debates on how triremes were actually sailed," he added with a chuckle.

"This is the corresponding scene in Sparta." There weren't any ships in sight. Instead men with large shields were practicing, bashing into each other and doing mock fighting. It must not have been very 'mock', Danielle decided. A few men were hauled to the side of the field and treated.

"The real coup," Roger said, "was that one of our people managed to get on the delegation to the Delphic Oracle."

The town in the slide didn't look that different than any of the others. It was set in a mountainous region, though, and there seemed to be a lot more buildings that Danielle thought of as 'temples' from the history books she'd read. Everyone was wearing a peplos, though there was a lot of semi-nudity scene on the side streets.

"There are a lot more women around," Danielle whispered to Uncle Jack.

"Athens was pretty restrictive on what a woman could do," Uncle Jack whispered back. "That wasn't necessarily the case in other Greek cities. Did you see how many women there were in the pictures of Sparta?"

Danielle shook her head.

"They were a lot more liberal about their treatment of women than almost any of the other city-states in Greece. There were stories about how 'loose' the Spartan women were, but most of that was just wishful thinking."

Danielle thought about that. She made a mental note to do more reading about Spartan women. That sounded interesting.

"This is the Temple of Apollo," Roger said, showing a new slide. It was a low building with many columns set into the hill. "The actual chambers of the oracle were below ground. Unfortunately we don't have any video or even pictures of the events in that chamber. That's another research project.

"You can see the faces of the Athenians when they emerged from their prophecy. Historically they were told that Athens was doomed. We recorded most of what they said to each other, and we even got a picture of the transcribed oracle."

That slide was of a scroll with some sort of writing on it. "We're still working on the translation," Roger said. "It appears that the prophecy is slightly different on each alternate, which only makes sense."

"Why's that?" Danielle asked her uncle. "I'd think they'd all be the same."

"That happens on every alternate," Uncle Jack said. "The net result is the same, though. There are a lot of theories about why that happens. You can read up on it, but you'd need some pretty advanced math to understand the arguments."

Roger showed a lot of pictures of the rest of Delphi. It seemed like the cameraman had gone on a tour, trying to record as much as he could. After that the delegation visited the Oracle once more, and this time seemed a little happier with what they'd learned.

"As most of you know," Roger said, "the Oracle said to put their trust in the Wooden Walls. Later, after the event, the Athenians decided it meant their navy. But some said it must relate to the old wooden palisade that used to surround the Acropolis."

He had a few more pictures of the trip back to Athens. There was one that made Danielle catch her breath. It was of the city, seen from a distance, in the early morning light.

"That concludes this part of my presentation," Roger said. "The events of that summer are coming up, and I'll be journeying back to that alt-Greece in the next few days. We've been placing cameras in a few critical places, and the next time I'm home I should have some really good pictures and videos of the two critical battles: Thermopylae and Salamis."

Danielle glanced at her watch. He'd spoken for two hours! Where had the time gone?

"All right, that's the history account. After the break I'll cover the various techniques employed to infiltrate the area, and some of what we learned when we did so."

"Do you want to go?" Uncle Jack asked as they got up. "Most of the rest of this will be a dry discussion, without pictures, of the details of their expedition."

"Will many people be attending?"

Uncle Jack smiled and shook his head. "Only about a third."

"What time is it?"

"Just after 9:00. He's scheduled to go until 10:30."

"Sure, why not?" Tomorrow was Sunday, and she could sleep in. Oh, wait, she'd forgotten that they'd be going to church. She'd figure something out.

"All right. I'll get us some refreshment. Why don't you go do what you have to and I'll meet you back here in 15 minutes."

Danielle nodded and headed for the Ladies Room. The pictures had fascinated her, especially the travelogue parts in Delphi—she'd seen more women there than in any of the pictures except for Sparta. She really wanted to hear what Roger had to say about how they'd organized their trip, and what they'd done while they were there. It looked a lot more interesting than the comment she remembered from a teacher back in Tiburon: "That's just a bunch of writing about dead white guys, and not really relevant to the modern world. I wouldn't waste me time looking at it." That teacher had clearly had her head stuck somewhere other than the top of her neck. History, even ancient history, was a lot more interesting than she'd thought.



-------

Chapter 5


"Do you want to see what I do while you're in school?" Aunt Jessica asked Saturday morning. They'd finished breakfast and Aunt Jessica was washing the plates.

"I thought you taught at the local college or something."

"Not really," Aunt Jessica said, smiling. "I do give lectures, but I'm still basically just a researcher."

"So I wouldn't be sitting in the back of a classroom watching you talk."

"No, nothing of the sort."

"But it's Saturday. I thought—"

"C'mon. I think you'll find it interesting. Besides, there's something I want to see."

"Where would we go?"

"I work at the Gate Building in Terminus."

"I suppose you do a lot of reading."

"No, actually, I do a lot of looking at images."

That sounded more interesting than watching someone read books. "I suppose," Danielle said. She plucked at her robe. "I'll have to get dressed."

"It'll be just the two of us. Jenny and Brad went off with some friends."

And they didn't even think to ask me, Danielle thought to herself. Figures.

"Let me go get dressed."

She wasn't sure what was appropriate, so she just put on the first thing she found that looked clean, a beige skirt and white top that was at the front of her closet. She was pinning up her hair when Aunt Jessica came down the stairs.

"All ready, I see. I think you'll find this interesting."

Danielle gave her aunt a smile that didn't promise one thing or another. They walked down to the corner and caught the trolley. They had to take the train to Terminus, and sign in before they got to Aunt Jessica's office.

Danielle's first impression was that it wasn't what she thought a college professor's office should look like. There were books on the walls, but not as many as she'd expected. There were whole shelves of videotape or CDs or something, and a desk in the corner with two monitors.

Aunt Jessica moved some books from a chair. "Have a seat, this'll take a few minutes."

She logged onto the computer and entered all sorts of things besides a password. She had to call someone on the phone, but she finally turned on the second screen. "The left one is the camera shot," she said. "The right one is a position indicator."

"Position indicator? Of what?"

"Florence, Italy," her aunt said. "Local date is September 2nd, 1497. As near as we can tell, that is an accurate map of the Florence of the time."

She moved the cursor on the right screen to a button and clicked it. "Hello Grace, it's Jesse."

The screen on the left blinked and came to life. It showed a town square. There was a large bonfire in the middle of the square, and people were throwing books and other things on it.

"Hello Jesse," came a muffled woman's voice. "Can't talk too much, too many people. Where's David? I thought he was working today."

"Pam went into labor last night. What's going on?"

"Bonfire of the Vanities. Savonarola's thugs are going door to door cleaning out anything they don't like. They're also committing petty burglary, but nobody's going to call them on it. Not yet, at least. Oops, gotta shut up."

"Grace is an agent-in-place," Aunt Jessica said. "She's part of a team working in this particular Florence for myself and about a dozen others."

"They're burning books," Danielle said.

"They're taking ones the head of the city government, a priest named Savonarola, deems debasing or not morally correct. They burned paintings, books, vases and anything else he didn't like. It's come down through history as the 'Bonfire of the Vanities'."

"He could do that?"

Aunt Jessica nodded. The picture on the left changed. The camera was obviously attached to someone and that person was walking through a crowd.

"Their clothes are so rich."

"Florence was pretty prosperous."

"Wait a minute. If that's another time, how are you getting the picture?"

"They set up a solar powered WiFi system. Grace is carrying an internet camera in her clothes, her hair I believe, and it transmits to the WiFi system. That's connected to a gate via a cable—you can't broadcast through a gate for some reason—and then to our system here."

"Could she get caught?"

"She's been trained to blend in. She doesn't do anything, she just goes where we want, and takes her camera along. She isn't the only one working in Florence; there's a team of six there with her, and a technician. I don't know all of the details, though, so I couldn't help you with it."

Danielle watched as the camera moved closer to the bonfire. It became obvious that the person with the camera was carrying something when a painting was handed to someone to toss on the flames.

"Did this go on for long?"

"For most of a year," Aunt Jessica said. "Then people grew tired of the priest, there was a coup and he was arrested and burned at the stake."

"Ugh. For that?"

"Among other things. He was a fanatic, and he condemned quite a few people to death for either disagreeing with him, or being 'immoral', at least as he defined it." She smiled sadly. "If you wanted to make a point of it, people lost their lives and property for being not politically correct. I don't want you to think I'm drawing any obvious conclusions, though."

"Did you bring me here to make that point?"

"No, actually, I brought you here to see what I do for a living. It just happens to be what's going on in Florence right now." She typed in another command, and both screens changed. The picture on the left was from a hill overlooking a harbor.

"This is Genoa."

"And you have an agent there, too?"

"Only occasionally. This is one of a dozen cameras in Genoa that are fixed in place. They don't always show us much. Here, let me show you what we recorded a while back."

She typed in a series of commands. The screen cleared to show a column of knights in armor marching along a road. Men with crossbows and really antique looking guns followed them.

"This is part of the French Army invading Italy at the time. The French King Charles decided he wanted Italian provinces, and led one of the best armies of the time into Italy."

"This happened ... now? I mean then?"

"Well, about three years ago, local time. That's why we always say 'local time' when we're talking about what happens on an alt. The French continued south for a ways and won a battle. We didn't have any cameras there, which I always thought was a pity. This was the start of a whole series of wars that would tear up this area for the next 30 years or so. In our original history the French were finally ejected from Italy for good only in 1859."

"Wouldn't a battle ... I mean, all these people dying, and guns and everything? How could you look at it?"

"The first few battles were fairly bloodless," Aunt Jessica said. "The Italians fought a kind of war that was all maneuver, and the side that felt it was out-maneuvered would retreat or surrender. After all, they were mercenaries, and getting killed would rob a mercenary of his pay."

"But a battle..."

"It's hard, the first time, and I won't say it gets easier. Normally we can't get records of a battle. It's hard to predict where they're going to happen, and our agents are under orders to stay away from them. Sieges, on the other hand, are more predictable. We still don't want our people involved in one. Instead they put in fixed cameras and evacuate through a gate."

Danielle got tired of watching the harbor scene in Genoa. She could see a few ships, including a large one with oars, moving around the harbor. Her aunt must have sensed it, and clicked to Florence again.

This was an interior shot. It was dark, except for light streaming in through the windows. She could make out a few people at the other end of a long room. There was a staircase to the left, and the person with the camera climbed that, walked down a hall, and entered a bedroom. The camera moved jerkily for nearly a minute, and then a hand pulled open a bookcase and the view was of someone descending a spiral staircase.

"What's going on?" Danielle asked, fascinated.

"We have an underground room below that house," Aunt Jessica said. "The owners don't know it's there. That's where our equipment is."

A hand pushed a place on the wall, and what looked like a bricked-up entrance swung open. The camera advanced. The light went out, and then back on as another door opened. This room was filled with racks of computer equipment, and an arch of pipes in the far wall. There were electric lights overhead, and a small refrigerator against the wall.

"You still there, Jesse?" a woman's voice said.

"Still here, Grace. Sit down and relax."

"Glad to. Let me get out of this rig and we can chat."

The camera was placed on a table. A figure in a dress could be seen disappearing into another room. After a couple of minutes a woman came out wearing a robe. She crossed to the refrigerator and took out something. Then she sat in a chair with her feet up.

"God, I'm glad to get out of that get-up for a while. The things we do for knowledge."

"Tell me about it. I took my turn in the field. I worked several different Romes, and all of them smelled like you wouldn't believe."

"Oh, I'd believe it all right. Okay, a couple of things, and then we can look at my playback."

The next few minutes sounded like gibberish. Aunt Jessica and the woman spoke back and forth, their words clipped and full of jargon. Aunt Jessica made notes, working from a long list of questions. Finally she finished and leaned back, stretching.

"I want to look at something in one of my references," she said. "In the meantime, this my neice Danielle."

"Hi Danielle," the woman on the screen said as Aunt Jessica got up. "Call me Grace."

Danielle tried to hide her surprise. She hadn't realized there was a camera in her aunt's PC. She tried to think of somethig to say.

"Been, uh, been doing this long?"

"I've been in Florence for nearly a year," Grace said. "Before that..." She sighed. "Before that I had several months of intensive training."

"Are you one of those agents for the—"

"For the Commission?" Grace shook her head. "No, I'm a grad student doing my field work for the University."

"Is it hard?"

"Staying in character?" She nodded. "Yeah, at first. That's why the previous person on-site trains her replacement. I've just been assigned a trainee, which means that in a month I'm headed home."

"I bet you can't wait."

Grace laughed. "The first thing I'm going to do when I get back is eat a whole quart of chocolate ice cream. You don't miss something until you can't have it."

"Does everyone ... is what you do a requirement for your degree?"

"For my Ph.D.? Yes it is, at least in this field. I don't know about the others."

"So what is it you do there in Florence? Aunt Jessica said you wander around a lot."

"Yeah, mostly. I'm covered as a member of the minor nobility, a distant cousin sent to the city to look for a husband. That lets me go places and see things a peasant girl would never get near."

"Covered?"

"Ah, my cover story. You have to have one that's plausible. If a stranger just shows up and starts asking questions ... well, let's say it wouldn't go well with them."

"Aunt Jessica said you're staying in this large house. Do they know... ?"

"Not really. I have to carry on a fake correspondence with my 'distant' relatives. Setting up something like this takes time, and is a bit risky."

"So people have been studying there for a while?"

"Twelve years. I'm not the only one here, though. There are six others, and a tech. I'm hoping we can set something up so we don't have to fool our hosts."

Danielle tried to think of what to ask next. Finally she had it. "What have you been looking at lately?"

Grace shifted in her chair and took a sip from her drink. "Well aside from the larger project, which is studying the politics of this city, I've been focusing on the social customs. That means I've had to attend a great many parties and listen to hours and hours of gossip. Most of it is who's seeing whom, who's snubbing whom, and anything else you can think of. Think of it as just like back in high school, except these people have nothing else to talk about. Or at least they didn't used to."

"Did something happen?"

"A fanatic priest named Savonarola. A lot of our effort is to document just what happened. Today was one of the key events. On one hand it boosted him to the top of his political power, but on the other his extremism led to the coup that overthrew him. We're hoping to get that, too."

"A coup? That sounds dangerous."

"It is. Our boss told me that we're going to have a couple of Commission Operatives here to bail us out if we have problems."

"That happened to my husband," Aunt Jessica said. "He was dragooned into the Prussian Army when he was doing his field work. They got him out of there, but it was touch-and-go for a bit."

"Yeah, I hope that doesn't happen here." She glanced at something out of range of the camera. "I've got about 10 more minutes, some of which I'll need to dress again."

Aunt Jessica made shooing motions. Danielle got out of the chair, but stayed close. "I've got the take. Was there anything else you recorded?"

"I had to replace the camera at Fountain Square," Grace said. She did something that was out of sight of the camera. "I'll shoot the contents across to you with my recorded commentary."

"Anything you want me to tell David?"

"Tell him he owes me pictures," Grace said. "I'll see him when I get back, but be sure to say hello. And if you can, I'd appreciate a picture or two."

"I'll see what I can do. In fact I'll go visit him right after we're done here."

"Appreciate it." Grace got up. "Nice meeting you Danielle. Maybe we'll get a chance to meet in person."

"I hope so," Danielle said. "I'll probably have a lot more questions."

"I'll see you at the regular time, Jesse," Grace said. "Bye."

She moved away from the camera. Aunt Jessica busied herself with several things. Danielle watched the screen. After a few minutes Grace reappeared. She was wearing an elaborate floor-length dark red dress with a tight bodice and that flared from her hips. There was a lot of beading on the dress, and the lace at her wrists. Her hair was confined by a hat that resembled ones she'd seen Katherine Hepburn wear in a movie set in Africa. Grace swept past the camera and out of view.

"Is she going out on the street again?" Danielle asked.

"No, she was out of sight for a while, now she's expected to reappear."

"How does she get away with disappearing like she did?"

"She says she has to 'freshen up', which is the polite euphemism for going to the bathroom. It was considered extremly vulgar to call it that, but all of the other women know about how long it takes to do that, so she has to reappear, she can't linger. She spends a good part of her day just maintaining her cover."

"So where's she going to go?"

"She'll stay inside for a while, attending to those things that are normal for a girl of her age. I don't think there's a dinner party tonight. She always gives us advanced notice of them."

"Was that dress she was wearing typical of the time?"

"Oh heavens, yes, at least for the nobility. The hard part is all of the boning in the dress. It forces you to sit and stand straight, and it's a relief to get out of when you can, even just for a few minutes. That's why she was wearing a robe." Aunt Jessica laughed. "Call it instant relief."

Aunt Jessica did some things around her office, but in only a few minutes she logged off and picked up her keys. "Ready to go?"

"Where are we going now?"

"I said I'd visit David, so we're going there next."

"Where does he live?"

"A town called Upper & Lower, which is at the base of the falls."

That had to be the place Robin had been so curious about. Were there really naked people there? And if so, how could they stay naked all of the time? Oh, she knew about nudist camps and things, but she'd never really understood how people could do that. Weren't they embarrassed? She knew she would be.

They rode back to Valley's End, and Aunt Jessica caught a trolley that took them to the cable car station. They paid a small fare and waited in line. The view alone was worth the wait. There was spray from the falls, but farther out the green of the trees merged with the blue of the ocean. There was a rainbow off to one side, probably from the falls.

The cable car entered the station. When the door opened a half-dozen girls got out and headed toward the shopping district. Danielle wondered if they were nudists. They were dressed just like everyone else, so maybe they'd just been visiting.

There were three other people on the cable car. The attendant closed the door and grabbed a strap. "Everyone be seated, please," she said. "Regulations require that everyone remain seated until we've left the station. The windows are to remain closed during the descent. It will get louder the closer we get to the bottom, and you don't want to be deaf."

The cable car swung out of the station, but the swaying stopped after a few seconds. Danielle could definitely feel the 'downward' movement of the car. The cliff slid by only a few yards away. The attendant was right, though. She could hear the roar of the falls. It was muted at first, but steadily grew louder as they descended. Then mist covered the windows, blotting everything from sight behind a wall of light gray.

They emerged only a short distance from the bottom. Danielle peered out the window of the cable car, trying to take it all in.

The 'town' appeared to be little more than a few shops and restaurants. There were people on a look-out crowded close to the falls. She caught a glimpse of them before the cable car descended through the roof of the station. She wasn't sure, but some of those people looked like they weren't wearing very much.

"We've arrived in Upper," the attendant said unnecessarily. The car 'thunked' to a stop, and a lift lowered them to the level of the walkway. "Please watch your step as you exit the car."

The station was covered with a metal roof of some kind. The cable car had descended through it, and as she watched a hatch slid over the opening. She hadn't realized what that did to the sound before she realized she could hear her aunt.

"I said we need to go to the right up ahead," Aunt Jessica said. She glanced up. "I should have waited until it was easier to hear."

"Eh?" Danielle said, cupping her ear though she could hear perfectly well.

Her aunt laughed. "C'mon. We can do a little shopping on our way back."

It was much warmer than it'd been in Valley's End, and there was a thin film of mist coating everything. Even the street, little more than an wide walkway, looked damp. It had to be from the falls, which seemed to be just a few yards away.

Danielle tried to look everywhere. There were shops across a narrow street from the station. She could see a few people, but they were clothed. She kept hoping, secretly, that she would see more skin, but so far it looked like the stories Robin had told her were just that, stories. She sighed to herself, and followed her aunt.

They'd passed several stores when her aunt paused, eyeing a display of jewelry. "What do you think of the earrings?" she asked. "I know topaz isn't my color, but..."

"I think it depends on whether you tint your hair," Danielle said. "That could make all of the difference in the world."

Aunt Jessica sighed. "Perhaps." She gazed longingly at the earrings again, and turned away. "C'mon, time's a wasting. I have a roast I want to get in the oven when we get home."

They turned a corner and entered a gray building. There were two escalators there, one down, one up, and a group of lockers. Aunt Jessica ignored the lockers and stepped onto the down escalator. "The local City Council wants to put art on the walls of the escalators, but to do that would require money, and nobody wants to pay more in taxes to support that."

"Cement walls are kind of boring," Danielle said. She watched them move past only a few yards away. At least somebody had painted them, but they'd used gray paint, which really didn't help that much.

"Now don't be surprised at anything you see," her aunt warned her as they reached the bottom. "The people here aren't like they are back home."

They stepped off the elevators, passed more lockers—Danielle could see rooms on either side filled with them—and out onto the street. Directly in front of her she could see what looked to be miles of trees stretching unbroken until interrupted by a distant ridge, also tree-covered.

They turned to the left, and Danielle almost stopped in her tracks. There, only a few feet away, was a woman holding the hand of a little girl, and both were naked. A few feet behind them was a tall, skinny naked man, carrying a very little girl on his shoulder.

She wanted to stare at them, but her aunt was headed down the shop-lined street, and she somehow knew that staring would be the height of rudeness, just like in the locker room in Gym. She just filed away a mental picture of the woman—she couldn't really see the man—and her curves. She had on sandals and a small cap, and was carrying a purse, but that was it. Her skin was a golden brown, and her pendulous breasts swayed back and forth as she walked.

"A lot of the town's residents live around here," Aunt Jessica said when Danielle caught up. "The actual name of the town is Upper & Lower, and we're in Lower. The town is built on two shelves of rock, with Upper about 200 feet higher than lower. The river flows along one side, and Lower has bridges and roads to other places right around here. They'd have built them in Upper, but nobody wanted to disturb the view."

Two young boys, both naked, ran past, yelling something. That's when Danielle noticed how many naked people there were around her, visiting the stores, or stopping and talking. Men, women, teenagers, kids, it seemed like every age and body around her was naked. For the first time in her life she felt self-conscious about her clothes.

"Don't mind them," Aunt Jessica said. "Here in Lower you get quite a mix, and they're used to seeing fabric. They're much more intolerant down in Seaside."

"Intolerant? In what way?"

"Everyone has to be nude, locals and visitors alike." She smiled at Danielle. "It keeps a lot of the tourists out, ones who just want to see naked bodies."

Danielle spotted another couple, clothed, and felt like gravitating toward them. But Aunt Jessica plowed on, ignoring the naked flesh around them.

Eventually they came to a corner. Danielle could see houses down the street. "We'll pause here," Aunt Jessica said. "I should have remembered you wouldn't be ready for a visit to Lower."

"Ready? You mean about all of the... ?" She gestured at the people—not really that many now that she had a chance to really look—and their lack of clothing.

"The nudity, yes. It can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you aren't used to it."

"One of the girls at school had mentioned something about it," Danielle said.

"Probably in hushed tones about how everyone here is naked. Right? With emphasis on the word 'naked'." Danielle nodded. "People are like that." She sighed. "All right, enough gawking, it's time to go. I want to get home before supper."

They walked halfway down the block before her aunt stopped in front of a light green house with white trim. It had a minimal front yard, just a few square feet of grass, but there were flower boxes everywhere, and the flowers were in full bloom.

Aunt Jessica rapped on the door. "David, it's Jesse."

"Jesse!" A tall man threw open the door and gave his aunt a hug. He was naked and skinny with brown hair. "I didn't expect to see you so soon."

"I came as soon as I heard." She released David—Danielle took a look at his member, wondering if it'd grow like the times guys had hugged her when they were naked—and stepped back. "This is my niece Danielle. She just moved here from Zero Phase."

"Pleased to meet you," David said, extending his hand.

Secretly relieved—and disappointed—that he wasn't going to hug her, Danielle took it. "The pleasure's mine," she said. She tried not to look, but she was too aware of his body, his shoulders, his chest, and his male member flopping around out of a nest of brown hair. When he turned around she stared at his firm butt. She could feel her insides fluttering, and wanted to fan herself. It was a lot warmer here than she'd thought.

"So how did it go?" Aunt Jessica asked as they settled on the couch in a small living room.

"Just got back from the hospital," David said. He sat on a chair, crossing his legs modestly. Danielle fixed on his face, smiling faintly. She was not going to look at his lap and see if his thing tucked between his legs—that had to be uncomfortable—or stayed on top of them. Suddenly she wanted to know.

"Well? Details. I want details. Oh, and Grace says hello. She missed you today, but I explained why."

"What's happening there?"

"Later. It can wait until you get back, but Grace reports the Bonfire of the Vanities has started."

"And I missed it." David laughed. "You're right, it can wait, and I'll look at the tapes anyway. Okay. Last night we'd just finished supper when she began complaining of stomach pains. This was, oh, about 8:00 or so. At first we both thought it was gas, but about 10:00 she decided it was real. We called the doctor, and he said he'd meet us at the hospital."

"The clinic here, or... ?"

"We took the cable car to Valley's End." He chuckled. "I didn't even remember to put clothes on. It wasn't until we got to the hospital that somebody commented on it."

"She wouldn't need them," Aunt Jessica said, "but you..."

"Yeah, somebody gave me a set of scrubs to wear. They're in the next room, and I have to take them back. Anyway, labor started for real about 1:30, and about 4:15 she gave birth. A boy, 6 pounds, 10 ounces, 19 inches long. When I left the hospital she and the baby were both asleep. I thought I'd get some rest, and then head back late this afternoon."

"And take something for her to wear."

"Yeah, that too."

"Are they both all right?"

"That's what the doctor said." He suddenly started. "Oh God, I just remembered. I've got like a million phone calls to make."

"I'll tell everyone at work," Aunt Jessica said. "That'll save a few."

"I appreciate it." He looked at Danielle. "Don't ever marry someone from a large family. Every one of them expects a personal call. I'll be up half the day answering their questions."

"Too bad we can't do a conference call," Aunt Jessica said. "That would save time."

"Yeah, but I've got a couple of in-laws who'd object to that sort of thing. They want that personal touch only a phone call can provide."

Her aunt looked at her. "We'd better let you get started on those calls," she said, getting to her feet.

"Ah, before you go, though, you need a picture." He jumped to his feet and disappeared into another room. "Here you go," he said, holding one out. "This was taken after everyone had cleaned up."

Danielle looked over her aunt's shoulder. A dark-haired woman was sitting in a bed. She looked tired, but she was smiling fondly down at a baby in her arms. The baby was wrapped in a blue blanket, and looked half-asleep.

"I'll make sure everyone at work sees this," Aunt Jessica said. She put it in her bag, gave David a brief hug, and collected Danielle by eye. "I'll see you when you get back."

"It'll be a few days," David said. "Nice meeting you," he added to Danielle with an incline of his head.

"Great couple," Aunt Jessica said as they walked up the street. "Pam's really settled him down. He used to be a real party animal before they met."

"Party animal? How did ... how do they ... you know, um, party. Especially if they're... ?"

"Naked? Ah, David's from Fork, which is in North Valley. Pam's from here, well, actually a small town on the other side of the river. They met at the University in Center, and it was practically love at first sight. They were inseparable. Still are, for that matter."

The street they'd come down seemed emptier. Her aunt stopped at a couple of stores, but it was clear she was just window-shopping. Danielle was a little disappointed that they went directly back up the escalators. She wanted to look around and store some of the sights in her memory.

"What's with the lockers?" she asked when they reached the top of the escalator.

"You can rent one to store whatever it is you're wearing," Aunt Jessica said. "That doesn't matter here, but it gets important if you go toward the coast. The people here are used to the mix of clothes and nudity. The people in Seaside, I think I mentioned this, get rather militant about it."

"And they're naked all of the time?"

Aunt Jessica looked at her for a few seconds. "Not all of the time, just most of it. Guys will wear a supporter if they're doing much lifting, and women will wear a bra if they're exercising. And of course they wear a little pad arrangement during that time of the month."

"Ah." That answered a question she hadn't realized she'd had. That made a lot of sense. She remembered reading that at some nudist resorts in California women wore bikini bottoms when they had their periods.

They stopped at the jewelry store on the way back, and Aunt Jessica tried the earrings. She finally put them back. "Some other time," she said. "Perhaps after payday."

"We could hold them for you," the clerk said. She was naked, and seemed so relaxed that Danielle couldn't conceive of the girl being embarrassed.

"Um..." Finally Aunt Jessica shook her head. "I don't think so. I'll take my chances on them not being here when I come back.

"Jewelry is very popular," she told Danielle as they left the store. "When you don't wear any fabric you do other things to set off your looks."

"She wasn't wearing any makeup, either."

"People used to frown on it in Seaside, but in the last few years younger women have taken to wearing it; mostly for the eyes, though. There's a lot of social pressure that you don't disguise your body with powders or creams. Enhancing your looks, though, especially the eyes, seems to be all right."

They stopped to get a ticket, and Danielle tried to burn the picture of four teenagers, two boys and two girls, as they walked slowly down the street. All four were sipping on frosted drinks, and the girls were showing very elaborate hair. That made sense, she decided. A girl would want to show off in some way.

She wondered how they dated. Did they go to dances? There'd be a lot of touching, and wouldn't the boys 'react'? And what about movies? They'd be in the dark, and who knew what they could do when nobody was watching.

The door to the cable car opened, interrupting her train of thought, and she followed her aunt and six others on board. She wondered if there was someone who could answer her questions.



-------

Chapter 6


Danielle could hardly wait to tell Robin what she'd seen in Upper and Lower. She got to school early on Monday morning, and was surprised to recognize a girl she'd seen in Upper—she was one of the two teenage couples she'd seen—using a locker just two down from her. She wasn't sure what to say, or how. 'I saw you naked' seemed a little crude. The girl solved it for her.

"Are you Jessica Anderson's daughter?" the girl asked. "I saw you with her this weekend."

"You ... what?"

"I'm Fiona," the girl said, holding out her hand, "Fiona Snow." She was slender with dark hair swept over her shoulder and held back with a band.

"Danni Tyler," Danielle replied automatically, taking Fiona's hand, "and she's my Aunt Jessica. You ... uh, you look different."

Fiona laughed, waving her hand at her clothes. "Oh, these things. Yeah, I have fabric on." She plucked at her skirt. "My parents insisted I come to school up here rather than down in Seaside. They said I can't live and work down there my entire life, and I have to get used to the fabric world."

"'Fabric world'?"

"You know, clothes. I suppose I have to," she added with a sigh, "but I'm just not used to them. They bind and catch in all sorts of awkward places."

Danielle felt a sudden wave of relief. She was on familiar territory; she'd had the same complaint when she'd grown enough to have to wear a bra. "You might not be wearing the right size. That happened to me at first."

Fiona began unbuttoning her blouse. "Can you help me with it?"

"Not here, not out in the open," Danielle said, glancing around to see if anyone was watching. She grabbed the girl and dragged her into the nearest Girls Restroom.

Color had rushed to Fiona's cheeks. "I keep forgetting that people up here have some sort of nudity taboo."

"Not ... quite," Danielle said. "You can show things, you're just not supposed to show very much. Now let's take a look."

Fiona peeled off her blouse, and Danielle saw the problem right away. "The straps on your bra are too short," she said. "The bottom of your bra cup is pinching you."

"Too short? But I thought ... I mean, this is the one my sister wears when she's up here, and we're the same size and height, and..." She ran down as Danielle shook her head. "No?"

"Every girl is different, even identical twins will have some slight differences between 'em. They make these things in general sizes, but you have to adjust them to fit."

Fiona shrugged out of her bra and held it out. "All right, how do I do that?"

Danielle took the bra, carefully averting her eyes from Fiona's body. "Well, first you need to get properly fitted," she said, turning the garment over to read the size. "That won't solve the problem permanently because you're a teenager and your body is growing and changing. But I remember enough of when I got fitted that I can help you with a few things."

She did what she could, forcing herself to look critically at Fiona's chest, and making a rough estimate about adjusting the straps. "Here, try this."

Fiona had trouble with the hooks in back, so Danielle had to help her. Fiona smiled when the bra was finally secure. "Okay, I guess. I still don't see why I need one. My grandmother has lived her entire life without one."

"And I bet she gets uncomfortable if she does anything more than walk," Danielle said. "If you do any exercise at all you need one."

"I guess." Fiona buttoned up her blouse and examined herself in the mirror. "Come to think of it, my oldest sister, who went to high school in Seaside, said they had to wear them for gym."

"You'll hear some nonsense about how they make a girl look like she's nursing or something," Danielle said as they left the restroom. "Most of that's put out by women who don't need to wear one. A girl with any sort of chest needs one because it feels like her whole front is being pulled down. Remember, gravity is a girl's worst enemy."

"I'll remember that," Fiona laughed. "And I guess it's true, too, when you put it that way."

Danielle's curiosity prodded her. "So how do you like wearing clothes?"

"I don't. I like the feel of the sun on my skin." She held out her skirt. "It feels a little strange to have this knocking against my legs. How do you stand it?"

"You get used to it," Danielle said, shrugging. "You really go naked all of the time?"

"We call it 'nude'," Fiona said, "and yes, we do."

"What about that time of month?"

"I have a little pad that I wear, and tampons. You almost don't see it. But other than that..."

"Even in school? What about when you go on dates?"

"You mean like if I went out with a boy?" Danielle nodded. "That usually isn't a problem. You're hardly ever alone with a boy for any length of time. Parents are worried that their kids..." The color rose in her cheeks.

"Doesn't it get cold in Seaside?" Danielle asked, diplomatically changing the subject.

"Not really. In the wintertime it can get down into the upper 60s at night, but during the day it stays pretty warm. It gets colder up here, and yet people tell me this is a warm climate."

"I've heard the same thing." Danielle spotted Robin coming down the hall. "That's Robin. She's lived here longer than I have. She would know."

"Know what?" Robin asked. "Hi Fiona."

"You two know each other?" Danielle asked.

"She's in a couple of my classes," Robin said.

"She lives in Upper and Lower," Danielle said.

"Huh. I thought she lived in Valley's End. Really?"

Fiona nodded. "My whole life, except for when my family's lived in Seaside. Danni was helping me with my bra. I'm not used to wearing 'em, and I had it on wrong."

"You should get fitted," Robin said. "All girls should." She cocked her head. "Upper and Lower? Why aren't you going to school in Seaside?"

Fiona repeated what she'd told Danielle. "And they didn't want me to enroll in a regular school up here," she added.

"Oh?" Danielle frowned. "Why not?"

Fiona blushed bright red. "Because of one of the classes. So here I am."

Danielle wanted to ask which one, but the bell for the start of classes interrupted her. She and Robin had a class the last period, and Robin was trying to hide her laughter when she walked into the classroom in the late afternoon.

"What is it?"

"Fiona. I had P.E. with her last period. She's wearing a bra, but that's the only underwear she had on."

"She wasn't wearing any—?"

"Nope. I wasn't sure if I was shocked, or what."

"I know what you mean. On one hand I'm not surprised, but on the other..."

"Yeah, how can you wear a skirt and not wear panties? I hope the boys didn't notice."

"How do you tell her that she should be wearing them?"

"I tried. She said 'What for?' Telling her that they cover you doesn't do a thing. She doesn't see the need."

Danielle forced herself to take a mental step back. It was a strange way of looking at things, but from Fiona's perspective, the girl was right. Covered was covered. Clearly she only thought of the practical effects of clothes.

"I don't think either of us should go to her for fashion advice."

Robin exploded with laughter, drawing looks from the teacher and everyone else. "Goodness, no. She wouldn't know fashion if it hit her over the head."

The teacher rapped on her desk with her knuckles. Danielle and Robin looked at her stern expression and settled in their seats. When she got home Aunt Jessica was gone. Jenny was in her room, and from the noises, she was there with her boyfriend. Jenny hadn't closed her door all of the way; Danielle could see them on her cousin's bed, and if the noises hadn't clued her in, the sight of two naked bodies would have told her what they were doing. She paused for a few seconds, watching them.

They certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves. Jenny's fingers seemed to be hooked into the boy's shoulders, and her legs were wrapped around his. The whole bed was shaking, and both were moaning and gasping. She pulled the door shut, aware that she was peeping on what was a very private moment.

Aunt Jessica came home a few minutes later. Danielle met her in the kitchen. "Did you know Jenny and her boyfriend are upstairs having sex right now?"

Aunt Jessica nodded as if this wasn't news to her. "He has to share a room with his two brothers," she said. "This is the only place they can get any privacy."

"But don't you mind? I mean she's no older than I am, and yet—"

"One, I don't mind," Aunt Jessica said, cutting her off. "It's quite natural for a girl of her age, of your age, too, to be interested in sex. And two, yes, I think she has the emotional maturity to handle things."

"But ... but what if she gets the clap, or pregnant or something?"

"That's not going to happen in Three Valleys."

"It happens everywhere."

"Not here." Her aunt's voice was firm, and her eyes narrowed. "Things are different here. I thought you were told that."

"Everyone says that, but it really isn't true."

Her aunt had started to put on her apron. Now she sighed and hung it up again. "You're sounding a little harsh today. Are you still mad about what happened back in Tiburon?"

"No, not really."

Aunt Jessica cocked her head. "I think you just don't show it. You've gotten awfully good at hiding your real self these last couple of years." She sat at the kitchen table, and motioned Danielle to join her.

"You've been through a lot of changes in the last few weeks, haven't you."

"I'm fitting in," Danielle said.

"But your friends are back in Tiburon. Would you like to see them? I can arrange it."

"Really?" Then she thought about what she'd been told. "I couldn't say anything to them, could I."

"Not really. You could see your parents instead."

"Um, maybe."

"I'll take that as a yes. It'll be a week or so before we can do this."

"How much ... how much do they know about this place?"

"Some, but only in a general way. They don't know the specifics, only that there's a place where you're safe. That was very important to your mother."

"How much do they know ... about what happened?"

"Probably more than you think."

"I didn't tell her, but you guys probably did."

"Your parents love you very much, Dani. They want you to be safe, to grow up safe and healthy, and where you were, that wasn't right. You don't know how much it cost them to send you here."

"They can afford it. Dad's rich."

"I'm not talking about money."

"But how could they know? Was it Jenny?"

"She only told me a little, enough, though. Your mother had figured it out."

"But I kept it a secret."

"Not really. A mother knows a lot more about her daughter than the daughter realizes. Dear, you should have said something."

"But I couldn't. I was so embarrassed."

"I understand that, but you're here, now, and none of that matters." She looked thoughtful. "You should write your friends, though, and let 'em know you're all right."

"I suppose someone will have to review it, or something."

"Someone will."

She gnawed on her lip. "I guess I can."

"Good. And I'll set it up so you can see your folks."

Danielle returned to her room. Write a letter to her friends? Which one could she send it to? She tried to figure out who she was close to, but for one reason or another, nobody came to mind. Finally she settled on Kendra. They weren't exactly close, but she wasn't involved in a lot of what went on.

When she thought about it, there really wasn't that much she could say. She toyed with the idea of saying exactly what was going on: 'I'm living in a place that is 18,000 years ago. The people are so reactionary you wouldn't believe it. This is the Donna Reed Show, or Leave it to Beaver. Talk to you when I can.'

Somehow she knew that wouldn't work. Somebody would read her letter, and she'd get in trouble. She'd probably get her aunt in trouble, too. She didn't want that, so she made a list of what she could say: 'The school here is a lot harder than the classes I was taking. The scenery is beautiful, and the weather pretty nice. I've made a couple of friends.' She smiled. That about summed it up.

She wrote that out, added a couple of personal details and questions, and put it in an envelope so it could be mailed. She deliberately didn't seal the envelope. That way they could open and read it without having to slit it open.

Then she opened her books. School was a lot harder than she thought it should be, but from what Robin had said, nobody expected any different. She knew there had to be better ways of learning, but she didn't know enough to figure them out.

The next day there was a note in her locker: 'Come to the office at the end of the day.' That was all. It was too soon for there to be any repercussions about her letter to Kendra. Or was it? She had no idea how fast these people worked.

A woman who identified herself as Mrs. Henry was waiting for her. "You wanted to see me, ma'am?"

"Ah, Miss Tyler. Have a seat."

That was something else she'd noticed. Back in Tiburon they would have said 'Ms. Tyler'. Here it was Miss or Mrs. The boys were always called Mr., and she thought that was kind of unfair.

"I've scheduled an appointment tomorrow at noon for you with Dr. Wayland. She wanted to do a follow-up with you, just questions and a little blood work, nothing serious."

Danielle thought of needles, and nodded. She'd learned not to mind them, but only if she didn't have to look at them as they went into her arm. "Is that all, ma'am?"

"No, I had something else for you." She folded her hands and smiled. "Ordinarily you would have a good idea of what you want to do after school. But you haven't been here long enough for that. Or have you? What interests you, Miss Tyler?"

"Well, I like people..."

"I hear that a lot. Have you done something, or seen something, and got interested in it? There are a lot of different things to do here, and you're at that age where you should be thinking about it. Whatever it is, we can tailor some of your classes to help you do that."

"Really?" That was so different from the cookie-cutter approach back in Tiburon. Of course back there you got a 'general' education, what was supposed to be the basics that everyone had. She'd wondered about that. It would probably only take a month or so here to teach kids what they spent most of the school year in Tiburon learning. The material really wasn't that hard, but it seemed geared to the slowest kids. That was what you got when it was 'one-size-fits-all'.

"I liked what my aunt is doing," she said finally. "You know, the different cultures and things like that."

Mrs. Henry smiled. "I kind of thought you would. Tell you what: I can arrange a class for you where you learn about different cultures. It's heavy on reading and video work, and you'll have to learn how to do an analysis. How does that sound?"

Danielle had tried that one term in Tiburon, and had hated it. The class had focused heavily on how every other culture was superior to America's, which didn't answer the question of why did everyone wanted to come to America if it was so bad.

"Is it a comparative cultures class? I had one once like that and I hated it."

"Yes, and no. It's more of a general survey. It looks at different types of cultures, and tries to lay out how each one forms itself around a set of core beliefs. The idea isn't to make judgment calls as to the worth of each culture. Instead we want to give the student the tools for studying a culture."

"I could ... I might be interested in that." She decided to sample it first, and see whether they were giving her BS or not.

"Good. It won't happen right away, but we'll set it up for the next evaluation period."

"'Evaluation Period'? What's that?"

"That's when we take a look at your progress and see what needs to change to give you the education that you need, as well as the one you want. You're in high school now, and you have some say in your education. In the past you didn't. Everyone in the lower grades has to have certain basics, and in the lower grades you have to meet certain criteria. In high school you can pick and choose some of those things."

That sounded like a non-answer, or at least one she'd have to puzzle through some other time. She smiled at the woman, thanked her, and headed home. She had a ton of homework to get through—she wondered what the people here would say to the idea she'd heard at Tiburon that if a teacher assigned homework it was because they weren't doing a good job of teaching—and between dinner and sleeping there wasn't much time for it.

"That's because your job right now is learning," Aunt Jessica said. "You're growing, you're changing, and you need to learn about the world. That's what the young do."

"You make it sound so ... I don't know, so utilitarian."

"It is. Education is the tool-set young people need to function in the world. There are a number of practical things you have to learn to be able to get about in the world. You have most of them already. The classes you're taking are to just raise you up to the minimum acceptable standard."

"You mean all of this math and science stuff?"

"Don't make a face and dismiss it. Science and math are what separate us from the hunter-gatherer tribes. And you'd be surprised at how useful math is."

"So ... you calculate angles and geometric shapes every day when you work?"

Aunt Jessica laughed. "That's not a bad question. It's wrong, it totally misses the point of a math education, but it's not bad. No, what math teaches you is how to solve problems."

"That sounds like word problems." She shook her head. "I'm no good at math problems."

"You want to make 36 chocolate chip cookies. The recipe says it'll make 16. How do you change the recipe to make 36?"

"Um..." She knew it was a trick question, but she couldn't resist. It was about food and cooking, and she'd enjoyed messing around in the kitchen. "I'd make two batches of 16, and a partial-batch, um ... A quarter?"

"Very good. And how did you arrive at that number?"

She flushed. "Well, 36 is a little more than twice 16, so at the very least you have to double the ingredients, but..." She did some counting. "Yeah, that's right."

"You see? That was a practical problem, and math is a way of solving problems."

"But geometry? Trig?"

"Different aspects of math. And logical thinking."

"But..."

"And science, cooking is chemistry. Physics teaches you the basic rules of the world. You might not know what gravity is, but you'll be able to calculate the effects. One of our agents did a calculation involving gravity just yesterday."

"They did? How? What was it?"

"It doesn't matter too much, but it involved balancing something. And it was important to his cover. He was hailed as a genius by his fellows, but he was only using what he had learned in school."

"If he's balancing something," Danielle said, "then how did gravity get involved?"

"Simple," Aunt Jessica said with a smile. "They had something they wanted to lift. They knew it weighed a thousand pounds, and he calculated how long the lever had to be to lift it. Then he pointed out Archimedes had done the original calculation. When you do something like that, it helps if you can cite some ancient Greek or Roman philosopher. There's no shame in having read something, but they might get suspicious of someone who can do the calculations in their head.

"Now enough of that. Unless you want to help me with dinner, you need to get started on your homework."

For a moment Danielle was tempted. "I might disturb Jenny and her boyfriend."

"Or they might disturb you." Aunt Jessica put on her apron and handed Danielle one. "Why don't you look through the refrigerator and see what you can find for a vegetable? I'm thinking there might be some green beans in the pantry."

"I saw some there in a can," Danielle said. "I don't like them just boiled. What if I sauté them in butter?"

"Technically speaking that isn't a sauté," her aunt said, "but sure, go ahead. If there are any red beans there, I'm sure I have some brown sugar and molasses."

Danielle set to work with a will. She'd had a cooking class in Tiburon, back before it suddenly wasn't socially acceptable for a girl like her to do. She couldn't remember exactly why, either, but it had something to do with "women's work", something that would get her teachers up in arms. The classes had been fun, and she liked playing with the flavors and textures. If she couldn't do what her aunt did, and she wasn't sure she was smart enough, she could always become a cook. She was pretty sure that was socially correct here. Women here were expected to know how to cook. She somehow suspected Jenny was pretty good in the kitchen.

She found the red beans and opened a can of molasses. She'd seen something in a magazine about slow-cooking the beans. They might not eat them tonight, but they could have them tomorrow, and ... She idly wondered how she could go about becoming a chef. None of her friends could tell her a chef in a famous restaurant was beneath her.



-------

Chapter 7


A few days later the same woman called her to the office after class. "I have the results of your first evaluation," she said.

"Evaluation?" She'd pictured a day of taking tests, like the last day or two before the mid-Winter break in Tiburon. "When did they do that?"

"You're still new here, so we rely upon teacher's reports."

Oh great, she though. Now she'd have to suck up to the teachers. Some things never changed.

"Don't worry about it, though. They forwarded your quiz and test scores, and we went on those. There's only class that you've been taking that requires a written evaluation, and you're nowhere near that point."

She flipped through several sheets of paper, and then finally folded her hands on top of them. "You have a problem with math."

"I don't like it, if that's what you mean."

"Why?"

"I don't know, I just do."

"Uh huh." The woman flipped through the pages again. "If you want to do anything, you're going to need higher math scores. I'm going to recommend a student tutor."

Oh great, Danielle thought, someone to lord it over me.

"She wants to be a teacher, and she's already done some assisting in class. This will be a good experience for both of you."

Danielle kept her face impassive. She'd learned that there were times you just went along, especially here. Some of these people acted as if you didn't have a brain.

"When will this start."

"How about tomorrow after school." The woman straightened up the papers and gave Danielle a smile. "I'll contact your aunt and uncle and make the arrangements."

Danielle dragged through classes the next day. A math tutor. Math was so ... so geeky. Only nerds and people like them took it. She wasn't sure she'd even call them people. True, Kendra took it, but that was different, she was going to be a doctor. She needed to know how to do the math so she wouldn't make a mistake with a prescription. But other than that ... The others at school were going to make fun of her because she was too dumb to pass their courses.

At the end of classes she still hadn't found out who her tutor was supposed to be. She was getting her sweater out of her locker when Fiona presented herself.

"You ready?"

"Huh?" Danielle frowned. "Ready for what?"

"I'm supposed to help you with your class assignments."

"You're ... what?"

"They asked me a little while ago, and I said sure. They told me that your last school didn't like to teach girls math because girls were supposed to be too dumb to take it. I figured that had to be why they asked me, because I know you're smart and all..."

She said more, but Danielle didn't hear it. Fiona? Teaching her? What was that going to be like? She only sort of knew the girl, so that would probably help. And if she wanted to be a teacher, then of course she would be pretty good at math. Teachers had to be.

"Sure, I guess," Danielle finally got out.

"Good. I'm supposed to help you with your homework, and they gave me all sorts of suggestions of how we can raise your grades. This'll be fun, you'll see. We can't do it at school, but I called my sister and she said we could do it at her place."

"Has anyone ... what about my aunt and uncle."

Fiona waved. "Oh, that's already taken care of. The school said they called them today, and they agreed. I'm surprised they didn't tell you. Of course it was during lunch, so..."

Numbly, and more than a little surprised, Danielle followed the girl. She kept silent while they walked down the street, but Fiona rattled on and on. They took the same way home Danielle normally followed, but after two blocks Fiona turned in at a white house with dark green trim.

"I thought you lived in Upper and Lower."

She grimaced. "I do, but only on the weekends. The first cable car doesn't leave until just a few minutes before school, so during the week I live here with my sister. She and some friends from Seaside are in college, and they rented this house."

She pushed open the front door. "I'm home, Christie, and I have someone with me."

"Boy or girl?"

"A girl."

"There's fresh lemonade in the refrigerator. Dinner isn't for a couple of hours."

"All taken care of," Fiona said. She pulled off her skirt and top and hung them in a closet next to the door. "I am so glad to get out of those things." She rubbed her thighs. "How do you stand it?"

"You learn," Danielle said. "You didn't wear a bra today?"

"It was dirty, and I put it in the wash. I guess I forgot to get my other one out this morning."

Danielle tried to picture what it would be like to forget something like a bra. Truly Fiona lived in a different world. She felt embarrassed by the girl's nakedness, but Fiona seemed totally oblivious to the idea that she was showing everything. Instead, she picked up her books. "C'mon, the backyard is private, and there's a place out there where we can work. Lemonade?"

"Um, yeah, I guess."

Fiona got a couple of glasses and filled them with ice cubes and lemonade. She handed them to Danielle, then got a towel and led the way into the backyard. Hedges surrounded them on all sides. There was one young woman sitting in a chair, reading, and another lying on a blanket, studying. Both were naked.

Fiona waved in their general direction. "That's Kirsten and Nan. They're both going to college in Terminus." She spread the towel on the bench and settled on it happily. "Feels good to get out of those things.

"Now I had a chance to look at your math scores and talk with one of the teachers. She had some suggestions, and I had a chance to put together a couple of things. Let's turn to page 138 and..."

Danielle forced herself to ignore Fiona's tanned body and focus on her math book. She's just a girl, she told herself. We're all girls here. Nothing to see that I don't see in the mirror every morning.

After an hour Fiona pronounced herself satisfied with the first session. Danielle wasn't so sure. She'd solved a couple of problems that Fiona had given her, but so what? She could always solve problems when she had plenty of time. Doing it during a test was still the problem.

Danielle was a little surprised that she didn't notice Fiona's nakedness all that much. Oh, she did, sort of, like when Fiona had got up to stretch, and showed off absolutely everything, or when Fiona had leaned over to show her something in the text book and Danielle had snatched her hand back when Fiona accidentally bumped it with her bare breast. Those incidents were hard to ignore, but Fiona so totally ignored her nudity that Danielle found she did, too.

She'd even managed to act blasé when Christie, Fiona's older sister, came out of the house with refills of lemonade. Like Fiona and the other girls, she was naked, and she seemed totally oblivious to the fact. She paid it so little mind that Danielle began to feel like the odd one out, and that she should get naked, too. She could never do that, though she'd once gone topless on a beach on a dare. But that was back home, and they'd gone over to the coast so there wasn't anyone around who knew them.

Fiona stuffed her notes into a folder, looked around, and then leaned over. "Have you ever kissed a boy?" she asked in a low voice.

"A few times," Danielle said cautiously.

"What's it like? There's this boy back in Lower that I've been seeing, and while he's never kissed me, I've been thinking about it a lot. How do you do it? I mean, of course you press your lips together, but where does your nose go? And how do you breathe?"

Danielle wanted to smile. She felt on familiar territory, and closed her textbook gratefully. "Well, you turn your head slightly so your noses don't squash into each other. That's first. It's almost an unconscious action, so you don't have to worry about it. Then..."

She walked home, wondering how couples in Lower kissed without getting a reaction from the boy. She remembered the first boy she'd kissed. The first time had been very chaste, as if both of them were afraid of what this meant. But a couple of times later she'd felt him pressing against her tummy. The kiss had made her hot, and she'd had all sorts of ideas that night when she'd been alone. But at least they'd both had clothes on. What would happen when the couple was naked?

She looked at those first kisses as a time when she'd been naïve. She'd kissed other boys, but it wasn't like her first time. They'd gotten excited, and they were at parties where the clothes had come off and things had happened. What did girls in Lower, and Seaside, do when boys had that reaction? Were there doctors there who routinely performed procedures? There'd have to be. This whole place was straight out of The Donna Reed Show, and sex outside of marriage just didn't happen.

She was trying to puzzle through that when she passed Jenny's door. She could hear her cousin's fierce whisper. "Harder! Harder! Don't stop!" and the rhythmic sound of a mattress being pounded by two bodies.

So much for not kids having sex outside of marriage. Maybe that only happened in Seaside and Lower. It almost had to, otherwise boys would be walking around with stiffys all of the time. And those boys she'd seen Fiona with a couple of weekends before certainly hadn't shown a typical guy's reaction to a girl's nudity.

If she pressed her ear against the wall she could hear her cousin moaning, and the stentorian breathing of Jenny's boyfriend. Then Jenny gave an "ahhh" and the heavy breathing abruptly stopped.

Danielle dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand. She could just picture what was happening, she'd gone through it a few dozen times herself. She began shaking her head. "It's not right. It's just not right."

She went downstairs. Aunt Jessica was in the kitchen, putting the final touches on dinner. "What's bothering you?" her aunt asked.

"Jenny and her boyfriend," Danielle replied. "They're making all sorts of noise, and ... and..." She stopped, not sure how to continue, and feeling angry tears in her eyes. "It's just not right."

"What's not right?" Aunt Jessica asked. "Jenny and her boyfriend?"

Danielle nodded.

"Look. I know what you went through. I also know that Jenny doesn't sneak around behind my back having sex. Nearly every teenage girl in Three Valleys has sex before they get out of high school. But unlike you, they take precautions so they don't get pregnant."

"That's not fair," Danielle said, feeling the implied rebuke. "I couldn't really take precautions."

"It obviously never occurred to you," Aunt Jessica said, "that the same doctor who could perform your little 'procedure' could also give you an IUD or an implant without your parents knowing. If you valued your secrecy, what you called privacy, so much, you should have thought of that."

Danielle blinked at her aunt, her eyes wide. She'd only thought of the Pill or condoms, she'd never thought of any other way to protect herself. And the women's magazines had been full of articles about that. Why there was even a ring you put in yourself that would stop things from happening.

"That's not the point," Danielle said, trying to shift back to her feelings.

"There's nothing stopping you from having sex," her aunt said in a lower voice. "I think you need to do a little more growing up first, and I think you have some emotional scar tissue from your time in Tiburon that you'll have to deal with first."

"Are you sure I should?" Danielle shot back. "I had a couple social diseases, and I showed a remarkable talent for getting pregnant."

"I know neither of those is a concern," Aunt Jessica said. "First, the doctor cleared up the diseases you have. We don't want to import them here, so the public health officials took steps the day you came here. And second, at my request as your guardian here, they gave you a birth control injection. No babies for you for three months. So you can have sex without the physical consequences. The emotional ties are another matter."

"And you think Jenny is ready for that sort of intimacy?"

Aunt Jessica nodded. "She convinced me that she is." She paused a beat. "You haven't, yet."

Danielle made a sound of disgust and stomped back to her room. She ignored her aunt's call to dinner, and the later knock on her door. She lay on her bed, staring at the wall, angry, not really sure why, and not in any sort of mood to try to get over it, either.

She ignored her aunt the next morning. Her stomach was cramping, and she had a headache. She should have eaten something, but she was too mad to care. She almost blew off her first class, but she had a math test in her second. She attacked it savagely, taking out her hurt and anger on the questions. She was surprised when her score came back: 78. The best she'd done previously had been a miserable 65.

"I knew you could do it," Fiona said when she showed the girl her test paper.

"Most of the questions on the test were like the ones you covered yesterday." She narrowed her eyes. "Did you have an advanced copy?"

Fiona laughed. "No, I had a copy of one of my sister's tests from the same grade. She had a different teacher, but they were about to the same place in the material."

"Oh." She'd heard of that. Kendra had told her that she practiced with her parents' textbooks. Then it hit her. Kendra's parents had had the same kind of material she was seeing here, stuff that was a lot more advanced than she'd gotten back in Tiburon. Were the schools deliberately dumbing things down? She'd read that schools wanted more kids to graduate and get into college. As far as she knew, there were two ways to do it: put more effort into teaching the slow students, or make everything easier. Some of the teachers, and she didn't think it was all of them, had obviously chosen the second approach.

Some of her anger had evaporated, and she 'forced' herself to have lunch. She had paused long enough when leaving to pick up her lunch money, but this reminded her: she needed to find a job so she had some money. She couldn't rely on her aunt and uncle to support her.

She asked Robin about it during a break between classes.

"You could probably find a clerk job in a store," Robin said. "I've got some applications in here and there." She looked at Danielle as if measuring her. "Or there's waitressing. Restaurants are always looking for good help."

"You'll have to figure out when you'll do your homework," Fiona said. "That's what's stopping me right now." She grimaced. "Well, that and I'm home in Lower on the weekend, and that's when they usually need people."

"I'll give it a try anyway," Danielle said. "I'm too old to 'play' on Saturdays, and I don't have a boyfriend, so I have more free time than most girls."

"I know a restaurant a couple of blocks from school that's looking for people," Robin said. "I wanted to apply there, but they use a spice that makes me sneeze. I'll get you an application."

"Poor girl," Fiona said. "I have a friend that got hives from something in a restaurant where she applied. She had to quit after only one week. Of course they had wild honey on the menu, and she had to harvest some of it, so maybe she got it from the bees."

Danielle thought of a girl like Fiona, totally nude, having to get honey out of a beehive. It was not a pretty sight."

"I appreciate that," Danielle said. She sighed and swapped the books she was carrying with the ones in her locker. "Until then, class awaits."

The other two laughed. "Yeah, it does."

She was a little more civil to her aunt and uncle when she got home, enough to eat dinner and say polite things about school. They pointedly didn't ask her about what had happened the day before, and she didn't feel an apology from her was needed. One from her aunt to say she was still a child was probably in order, but she suspected she wouldn't get one.

She felt good about the score on her math test, though that wasn't that big a deal. Math was still for dweebs, but a good grade was a good grade, especially in something as hard as math.

The rest of the week dragged. She still had a tutoring session with Fiona every afternoon, and by Friday she realized she barely noticed the girl's nudity, or the (un)dress of anyone else living in that house. Oh, it was hard to ignore when Fiona stretched, and doubly hard when Fiona undressed the moment the front door was closed, but she wasn't embarrassed by it any more, at least not as far as she could tell.

When she got home on Friday there was a letter waiting for her. It was from Kendra! She wondered if it'd been opened and read. If it had been, she was sure someone would say something about it.



"Dear Danni,

"It was great to hear from you! It was like you dropped off the face of the Earth or something. How are you? People have been asking. Where are you? You didn't really say, and no amount of hinting around your folks gave anyone any answers.

"I'm fine, most everyone is fine. Cindy Avondale ended up in the hospital. She didn't realize she was, you know, and started hemorrhaging right there in school and they had to call 911. I hope she'll be all right. I've told people they're playing with fire, but you know that crowd, they think they know better.

"I just learned that I'm going to be accepted at UCLA. Will you be going to college here? Your grades were good enough. Have you applied anywhere? Tell me what's going on! I'm dying to hear from you."

Your friend,

Kendra



Danielle checked the postmark. This had only been mailed two days before. Kendra must have written the moment she received her letter. That night she tried to decide how much to tell her friend. The truth, of course, but not so much of it.



"Dear Kendra,

"I'm fine. School here is a lot harder than in Tiburon. These small towns have small classes, and so the teacher can give you a lot of individual attention. That helps a lot, but they also know who slacks off, and so you have to work hard.

"I haven't met any boys that I like, and if I do, it certainly won't be like back home. I don't ever want to have to go through that again. I do have a couple of friends, and that's kind of fun.

"I haven't thought much about college. My plan is still the same: JC for a couple of years, and then see about transferring. That's if I go to college. I do like cooking, and until the school in Tiburon dropped it, I liked the cooking classes, so maybe I'll apply to a culinary institute. Or become an anthropologist. It's all up in the air right now.

"Where am I? I'm staying at my aunt and uncle's, and it's outside of an old mining town (school is out in the countryside). To get here you drive north in California almost to the Oregon border, and then you turn west. We're back in the mountains. I can look out my window right now and see them. They feel big and massive, and that's just for starters. There's a waterfall nearby, and I like going and looking at it. The water is like a mist of lace in the sunlight.

"I'd write more, but I have a paper I'm working on that I have to get back to. I'll write more in a week or so."

Your friend,

Danielle



She felt good about the letter. It didn't reveal too much, but sounded as if it did. Kendra might or might not pick up on that.

She put it in an envelope and left it downstairs to go out. Then she returned to her room. She did have a paper to finish, and after that, a bunch of problems Fiona had given her to do for Monday. It was math homework, but all of them related to cooking, and she found that interesting. That was a difference she liked. Fiona had given her problems in a way that encouraged her to learn. She had yet to have a teacher do that for her.



-------

Chapter 8


"Go get your things," Aunt Jessica said Saturday morning after taking a call. "We're off to see your parents."

"What? So soon?"

"If you'd been speaking to me these last few days," her aunt said, "I would have given you more notice. I told you Wednesday, but you were still upset and didn't listen."

Danielle felt her heart racing and decided to ignore the rebuke her aunt had just given her. She really wanted to see her folks. Her Aunt and Uncle tried to be good parents, but they expected things of her, things they got from Jenny, that she just couldn't give. She wanted to be hugged by her Mother, something she realized she'd really missed.

"Do I need to pack anything?"

"A change of clothes. We'll be coming back tomorrow afternoon."

She ran upstairs, and was back as fast as she could, a small bag with the essentials under her arm. "How do we do this? The same way we got here?"

"More or less. Depending on how things go, we might want to get you a locker at the Gate Building. They only let you do that if you come and go frequently."

"It's a thought."

Her aunt looked at the sweater Danielle took out of the closet. "You do remember it's winter there, don't you?"

"Oh." She traded her sweater for the heavy jacket. "Should I wear jeans?"

"Bring a pair, and a nice pair of slacks, too."

Danielle repacked, and this time her aunt and uncle met her at the door. Jenny, she noted, wasn't coming with them. She was probably in bed with her boyfriend again, she thought, and dismissed the girl.

They took the tram to Terminus, and got off at the Gate Building. Everything had to be inspected, just like before getting on a plane. Satisfied that she wasn't taking anything back with her, they let her through, only to show her into an office.

There was a woman in a dark dress. She gave Danielle an insincere smile. "I'm to go over what you can and can't say while you're there," she said. "Most of it should be familiar to you, but:

1. you can't talk about Three Valleys except in the most general terms.

2. you can't talk about The Project at all. We'll know if you do, and the consequences won't be good for you or your parents.

3. you can talk about personal things, but keep in mind #1 and #2.

"Do you have any questions?"

"Are you always this rigorous with people?"

The woman nodded. "Every time." She pushed a sheet of paper across the desk. "Read and sign this, please."

Danielle did so. It spelled out in detail what the woman had said. She signed, the woman stamped it, and then smiled. "You can go. Turn left and go to the end of the hall, and then follow the signs. Have a pleasant trip."

The signs led her to a waiting room where her aunt and uncle greeted her. "All set?" her uncle asked.

"All warned and signed for," Danielle said.

"We'll go through the gate, and then we'll need to change," Aunt Jessica said. "I was just told that they got several inches of new snow last night, so it'll be cold and a little miserable."

Going through the gate felt like it had the first time: there was a slight tingle, and that was it. There was a window in the next room. Danielle could see snow-laden branches, gray skies, and several cars in the parking lot half-hidden by blankets of white. But it was her world, and she wanted to embrace it.

She'd forgotten how cold snow could be, especially when it got into the top of her boots. Her feet were cold and wet when she got in the car, but Uncle Jack turned the heater on full while he warmed up the engine and scraped off the windows. Danielle remembered something she'd read in a magazine, and took off her boots. She carefully dried her feet and put on a dry pair of socks. She upended her boots over a vent. They wouldn't be dry, they'd be tolerable.

The trip down the mountain was slow. Uncle Jack was obviously taking no chances with the icy roads. The main highway had been plowed, and he sped up when they turned onto it.

"We'll be there in a few minutes," he said. "The road was worse than I thought it would be."

Danielle stared at the snow-covered landscape. Now that she thought about it, people in Three Valleys wouldn't get that much practice driving in the snow. In some ways it was like the people from Southern California. If they got snow, it was only because they were in the mountains. She'd have to visit Center. She'd overheard a couple of girls talking about living there, and how the winters were cold and bitter.

The last intersection coming down the hill was the worst. Uncle Jack put on the brakes, and they slid for several feet until they hit a sanded part. The car lurched, straightened out, and quit sliding. That was good, a semi hurtled past only a few yards away, going way faster than she thought prudent, given the conditions.

The town looked the same as before, a few buildings, a little bit of seediness, and the occasional person braving the snow and wind. The highway only had a few drifting skeins of snow, and Uncle Jack speeded up. There were a few other brave souls out and about, including a road crew that was trying to keep the road open. They'd plowed enough to keep one lane open, and a Highway Patrolman was letting only one lane through at a time.

Uncle Jack sat patiently. They were at the head of the line, and from time to time the patrolman looked at them. Uncle Jack smiled back, clearly not in a hurry, clearly complying with everything the patrolman would tell him.

Finally they got going, passing a long line of cars waiting to head in the other direction. "The traffic is one thing I don't miss," Aunt Jessica said. "I suppose if we ever moved to Center it would be different."

"Have you lived there?" Danielle asked.

"For three years," Uncle Jack said. "I don't ever want to go back. It's not the people, it's the climate. The ice sheet isn't that far away, and it makes everything colder than either of us like."

They were coming up on another town. Uncle Jack slowed and began looking for a parking place. They found one on a side street, wedging in between two mounds of snow that covered other cars.

"The restaurant is just around the corner," Aunt Jessica said as she got out. She slapped her hands together. "It'll be good to get out of this wind."

Danielle hunched as much as she could. Her hands were cold, and the wind was making her nose hurt. She was a creature of warmth. She'd never seen what was fun about skiing or doing any of the other winter sports. She'd gone to a ski resort with her friends once, but after a brief run down the hill on an inner tube, and pictures of her and the others doing that, they'd spent the rest of the weekend naked, partying with the boys. She wasn't sure, but she suspected that weekend led to her first procedure.

The restaurant had a double-door arrangement that was like pictures she'd seen of the airlock on the space station. You stepped inside—the shock of not having the wind cutting through you was profound—you unwrapped your muffler, and then pushed your way into the heat of the restaurant itself.

Her parents were there, and her mother wrapped her up in a hug without even waiting for Danielle to open her coat.

"I've missed you," her mother whispered. "Oh how I've missed you."

"It's so good to see you," Danielle said, hugging her back.

"Let me look at you," her father said. He held her at arm's length for a few seconds, as if inspecting her, and then drew her in for a hug. "How've you been?"

"Busy," Danielle said. "School is a lot of work. I haven't had much time for social activities."

"How are your grades?" he asked.

"Pretty good," Danielle said. "Math is still ... math, but another student has been helping me, and I think my grades are improving."

Her father hugged her again. "I'm glad." He shot Uncle Jack a look. "How are you evading the ever-watchful eye of the Teacher's Union?"

Danielle looked at Uncle Jack, curious. She'd heard her father rail against the Teacher's Union before, but always in private. This was as close to going public with his concerns as he'd ever heard him. And how was Uncle Jack going to keep things secret?

"Privately certified schools on non-public land aren't subject to the California Teachers Union," he said. "It's a loophole in the law."

"And one that they'll try to change if they learn about it," her father said. "In Great Britain they're now inspecting the homes of home-schooled children for 'safety' violations." He glanced around, and then lowered his voice. "They aren't so much concerned about the safety of the children as..."

Uncle Jack nodded. "The competition. It isn't about teaching, it's about their jobs. We've had this conversation before."

"Let's find a table," her mother said. "I don't know about you, but I'm feeling the cold air around my feet."

They settled at a semi-private table near the back of the restaurant. They were next to a window, but it was double-paned, and there was a warm-air vent at their feet that negated most of the cold. Her father ordered coffee around, though Danielle declined politely. She practically inhaled the Diet Coke they brought her; fortunately there were free refills. She savored the taste. She didn't miss the cold weather, or the traffic, now that she thought about it, Valley's End didn't have that much traffic, but she had missed this. She wondered if there was a way to take some back with her.

Her mother had sat next to her, and didn't say much as her father and her Uncle Jack talked. Her mother didn't need to. Every now and then she snuck in a hug or a squeeze, and once in a while a smile.

Danielle hugged her back. She felt like she wanted to cry; she'd made assumptions about her parents, but now, after not seeing them for two months, she realized how much they loved her. And she'd lied, she'd distorted the truth, and all the time she didn't realize how much they loved her, or how precious that love was.

"What classes are you taking?" her father asked during a lull in the conversation.

"Math," Danielle said, making a face. "Science--"

"Science?" her father said, frowning. "Such as?"

"Oh, nothing like chemistry or physics," Danielle replied. "It's mostly like what I had last year, practical stuff, things everyone should know, such as how a refrigerator works, or how electricity is made. We actually built a generator in class. That was a project we all had."

"I ... see." It was clear her father didn't.

"They give us a lot of projects," Danielle said. "You have the stuff they give us in class, but then we get individual projects that the teacher tailors to each student that helps you learn it. Some of the things are for everyone, like building that generator. But most of the time it's stuff that pushes us to learn on our own."

"Is it college prep?"

"Dad, it's way harder than the college prep classes I was taking in Tiburon."

She'd asked Robin about that. Everyone could go to the local community college. All you needed was time and money. The regular schools were funded out of property taxes, but after that the student had to pay for their education. The only exceptions were the top students who graduated from high school could qualify for a government scholarship to college.

"As long as she's getting a decent education," her mother said, "I don't care. What else are you taking?"

"English, of course. That comes in two classes, reading, and composition. We also get our choice of a foreign language, but Greek and Latin are part of the choices. That's optional, though, and right now I'm trying to get far enough ahead in my other classes that I can take a foreign language."

Her father frowned again. "I thought a foreign language was mandatory."

Danielle sighed. "It is, but you have to have the grades in your basic education program first. There's no point in learning how to read another language--"

"You mean speak."

She shook her head. "That comes later. This friend of mine is taking French, and she said you have to learn the basics of the language first, and to do that you have to learn to read it. Speaking it comes a little later."

Her father shot Uncle Jack a look, but relaxed. "All right, then. It's important to be exposed to how other people view the world."

Danielle was tempted to jump in and ask what other languages there were, but knew that was a no-no. Instead she continued with her classes. "We get a lot of history. As my teacher put it, you have to know where you've come from to figure out where you're going."

Her father looked doubtful, and it struck her that he had probably bought into the whole line that the teachers in Tiburon spouted about history being too one-sided.

"Well, we're not just studying American History, if that's what you're worried about. This last week we've been doing a lot of reading about Chinese culture. I did a little looking ahead in the book, and next month we get an overview of Latin American history."

"Ah." Her father looked happy with that. "Good. It's more important than ever these days to see the world outside of American eyes."

That sounded like what her history teacher had said in Tiburon before spending a week condemning American actions in World War 2. It certainly wasn't what she'd learned in school in Valley's End.

"Made any friends?" her mother asked, clearly changing the subject away from school.

"A couple. I haven't met any boys that I like enough to go out with, at least so far."

She talked a little about Robin, and some more about Fiona, but without going into particulars. She wasn't sure, but she thought her mother might not care that Fiona was a nudist. She wasn't sure about her father. He had some strange views, mostly brought on by his political career, and wasn't sure how he'd take any stories about Fiona's personal beliefs.

Lunch came and went, and the conversation drifted, touching on this and that. All too soon it was getting dark. Uncle Jack said he wasn't going to try the roads this late. He'd booked some rooms in the local motel, and they headed there.

The wind was like a shock. Snow was falling again, and the wind was strong enough that you almost couldn't see. Fortunately the motel was just across the street. They had an indoor heated pool, and a sauna. Danielle looked wistfully at them.

"Next time we come here I'm bringing my bathing suit," she said.

"I don't have one," Aunt Jessica said.

"Well, we can't be like Fiona. She does everything naked, so she probably goes swimming that way, too."

"I imagine so."

Her mother wanted to visit even more, and Danielle had no sooner checked out her room than her mother was knocking on the door.

This conversation was a little more personal, and after a few minutes Aunt Jessica joined in. "They're arguing politics again," she said by way of explanation.

"As if that's all there is," her mother said. "But, if you're a politician, that's all there really is. It's his hobby and passion, not just his job.

"So what's it really like? Where you're living, I mean."

Danielle looked at Aunt Jessica. "How much... ?"

"She knows. She wouldn't have let you come unless she knew."

"Has she been... ?"

"Not in several years. We can talk freely around her."

Her aunt and her mother looked at her expectantly. "It's like ... It's like living in those TV shows from a long time ago. You know, The Donna Reed Show and stuff like that."

"Really?" Her mother looked amused. "I wouldn't mind that. I think it would be a lot better than what we have now." She sighed and her shoulders slumped. "Our next door neighbor is in the hospital. She's addicted to vicodin. And our last block party was full of who was sleeping with whom." Her mouth twisted into a scowl. "Just another wonderful day in suburbia."

"You knew what you were getting into when you married him," Aunt Jessica said softly.

"Yeah, but it's gotten worse, way worse, especially in these last few years." She patted Danielle on the knee. "At least you're out of it. That whole culture is sick. They don't have a clue in their heads, and they..." She sighed again. "I wish George would retire, and then we could move back home."

"Back home... ?" Danielle looked at her mother in surprise. "I thought home was--"

"Back in Three Valleys, dear. My mistake was in coming here on an assignment, and then falling in love with your father. I'd give it all up, the house, the Commission assignment, our friends, just to live some place sane."

Danielle felt as if the bottom had just dropped out from under her. "You mean..."

"Jessica and I grew up in Terrace," her mother said, "though we went to school in Midtown. I was doing my field work for my degree when I met your father. The only way I could stay with him was to accept a job with the Commission." She smiled sadly. "I'm a glorified way station, collecting and passing on reports from our agents."

"Passing on... ?" Agents? Reports? She made it sound as if she was a spy of some kind.

Her mother shook her head. "Let's not go there. I do what I have to do. Anyway, when I learned what was going on with you and your sister, well, the only way I could think of to protect you was to send you to your Aunt Jessica.

"I know it's been hard, dear. You left all of your friends behind, but a mother has to protect her children. It was the only think I could do. I hope you forgive me."



-------

Chapter 9

They had brunch and spent another couple of hours of visiting. The snowstorm had muted by then, but every time someone opened the doors of the restaurant the cold air swirled along the floor, making people shiver. They went back to the motel, spending time in the lounge next to a fireplace. Danielle knew some of her teachers in Tiburon would object to a fireplace. After all, they were burning wood, which came from trees, which had to be cut down, and...

She'd snorted slightly to herself. In the last couple of months she'd gained a completely different perspective about such things. She remembered the pictures she'd seen at the lecture about Greece. Wood was often the only thing people had to burn, and they had to stay warm. They had to cook their food. The alternative was living like an animal. She wondered if that was what some of these people wanted.

I'm not an animal, she thought. She rubbed her arms and shifted slightly. She was nice and toasty, and had no desire to brave the elements.

" ... some days it's an uphill battle," her father was saying, "and those are on the good days."

"Can't these people look ahead and see what's coming?" Uncle Jack asked.

Her father shook his head. "They're so caught up in the present that, and this is a quote, 'In the long run we'll be dead, so what does it matter?'" He chuckled grimly. "The actions they take today limits that future, but they refuse to believe that."

"The State is not all-powerful," Uncle Jack said. "I suppose they expect the Feds to bail them out."

"That's the only alternative. I'm sure the Feds will, but that won't teach any lessons to those who need it. It's all about power and prestige, and the scorecard is, well, you know."

Uncle Jack nodded. "I've seen it happen over and over again in history. I hate to say that as California goes, so goes the nation, but..."

"I've tried to do what I can, but it's like talking to a granite wall. People just don't want to see it."

"Are you going to stand for re-election?"

"Somebody has to. If I don't, they'll get another one like them. Whoever runs against me will be heavily funded—you can bet there are people who want me out of office—but I got 77% of the vote in the last election. I don't take things for granted, so I'm always out meeting people and listening to them. If I just relaxed I'd be an ex-Assemblyman. Of course the real power isn't the State Assembly, not any more. These days it's the unelected bureaucracy. If we could get rid of at least half of it, things would be easier."

"And their pensions."

"That, too. But every time you find a new revenue source, their allies in the Assembly add a program, they don't apply it to what we already have."

He shook his head. "Listen to me, going on about things like that." He looked at Danielle and smiled. "And what have you been considering for college?"

"Well," Danielle said, hastily trying to order her thoughts, "I was thinking of studying history, sort of what like Aunt Jessica does, but—"

"Be careful with that," her father said, interrupting her. "You'll have to play political games. A constituent came to me the other day complaining about one of the teachers at the local community college. He wanted the man removed because he wasn't a Maoist, he was a Trotskyite!" He chuckled grimly. "As if there's much difference between one flavor of Marxist and another."

"Only on when they want to shoot you," Uncle Jack said. "I thought you realized, the last hold out of the Marxists is in American Academic circles."

"Not until recently."

Danielle frowned. "But I thought ... didn't Communism collapse or something? You know, the Berlin Wall?"

"But don't you know, dear? The Russians did it all wrong. That's why Communism failed." Her father shook his head. "I've had people actually tell me that to my face. One of the people from my district emigrated here from Russia back in 1992. I held a town hall meeting the other week, and when someone trotted out that little excuse, Anatoly, great guy, just don't ever go out drinking with him if you value your liver, anyway, Anatoly got up and said 'The Soviet Union gave it 70 years and 70 million dead. It does not work!' Of course they didn't want to hear that. The current excuse is that the Russians did it wrong, and the academics we currently have will 'do it right'."

"There's a picture I saw a few months ago," Aunt Jessica said. "It was a memorial stone, and it said 'Vladimir Lenin — speaker, academic, mass-murderer.'" The adults chuckled.

Danielle was somewhat taken aback by the tone of her father. She wanted to say that, the history she'd been exposed to was nothing like that. But she stopped. The history they'd been teaching her in school was almost at complete odds with the history she'd been taking in Tiburon.

She remembered the pictures she'd seen in Aunt Jessica's office. That looked interesting. That was the kind of history she wanted to study. But she wasn't sure she wanted all of the things her father was implying.

"I also thought about culinary school," she said when her father had run down. "You know, become a chef. There aren't that many women chefs, and I thought I might like to give it a try."

That didn't set her father off. Instead she saw the others nodding. She didn't know if there was a culinary school in Three Valleys, or even Center, but it sounded interesting. She'd watched the Food Network, and even read a few things. Food had taste, sure, but it had texture, and a lot of other things, and blending all of those took a real talent.

"Well, whatever you decide, honey," her father said, "don't limit yourself."

The rest of the visit passed pleasantly enough. She'd never realized how all-consuming her father's passion for politics was, but he seemed to find a political angle on nearly everything.

"It's the climate these days," her mother said quietly when they were temporarily alone in the Ladies Room. These days the people find politics in everything, and he has to respond. Sometimes I wish... " She bit her lip and shook her head. "I'll be glad when he retires."

"Think it'll be soon?"

"Not soon enough for me." She brightened up and checked her hair in the mirror. "Now you take care of yourself. I know things are way different back home, but bear up with it. You're much better off there than you are here."

"I suppose. It just seems ... strange."

"I know. It was just as hard leaving there and coming here." Her mother shook her head. "I had a lot to get used to."

Danielle felt somewhat buoyed by this. Knowing what she knew now about her mother, she could see how big a change her mother had had to go through. She'd gone from The Ozzie and Harriet Show to Desperate Housewives. And the look in her mother's eyes when they returned to the table told her why her mother had done it. Love could make you do almost anything.

"One thing I've wondered about," Danielle said, stopping her mother. "What about Sis? You know she went through ... She had..." Her voice ran down.

"I talked with your sister just last week," her mother said, her voice turning a little bitter. "Traci is all caught up with her own life now, and she and your father have had a serious falling out over politics. She wants to help the poor and oppressed. She'll feel better for doing it. She doesn't understand his politics at all."

"I expect all of her friends are doing that sort of thing," Danielle said, "so of course she has to also." She grimaced. "Your friends dictate an awful lot of your life. That's what I've been learning these last few weeks."

"Pretty much. I checked with my superiors, but they said no, they wouldn't let me send her to where you are. They barely said yes to you going. I think that's working out, though."

"It's been hard," Danielle said. "All of my friends were here, and some of the girls back there are ... different."

"Oh? In what way?"

She told her mother briefly about Fiona. "That's taken ... that wasn't easy to get used to. I'm still not sure I have. I mean, that's her, but..."

"People from Upper and Lower are unconscious about it," her mother said. "They generally have a live-and-let-live attitude. I think that's because they interact with us all of the time. The ones from Seaside are the militants. I remember taking a trip there when I was your age. I was there a whole week, and it was an eye-opener, and I don't mean just the boys."

"Did you have to... ?"

She nodded. "That was hard. Fortunately gym class prepared me for it. Now let's get back, they're looking at us kind of funny."

She didn't have a chance to ask what her mother meant by 'gym class'. Before she realized it, the afternoon was winding down and it was time to leave. They said their good-byes, and were barely on the road when Danielle felt like crying. She felt closer to her mother than she had in months. They had a lot more in common than she'd thought. Oh, she loved her mother, but now she liked her, too. She'd done things that were hard for a woman: given up her world for love, and sent her daughter away for the same reason.

A woman quizzed her when they got back, and Danielle told her as much as she could remember about what they'd talked about. The woman seemed satisfied, and smiled when Danielle said she couldn't wait to get outside in the warm air.

"I know how you feel." She straightened up her papers. "As soon as you get your medical, you can go."

Dr. Wayland greeted her with a smile. "How've you been?"

"Pretty good," Danielle said. "I just spent the weekend on the other side, and I'm to get a check-up."

"Of course," Dr. Wayland said. She got out a couple of instruments. "Let's get started."

This physical didn't seem as intrusive as the first one. Dr. Wayland finally indicated she could get dressed and leave. "You didn't pick up anything when you were over there."

"Do you do this for everyone who goes back and forth?"

Dr. Wayland nodded. "Everyone. A few big-shots didn't think it applied to them. I understand the doctors who checked them were very thorough."

"You mean you weren't thorough with me?"

"I was, but I used warm instruments." Dr. Wayland smiled. "Think about that."

Danielle smiled back. "If your stethoscope was cold, your patient couldn't help but draw a sharp breath."

Dr. Wayland nodded. "You got it. Now get out of here. By the way, how are you doing?"

Danielle thought about the question as she dressed. "I still have ... There are some things..." She paused, searching for the right words.

"I don't know how you've done it," Dr. Wayland said. "Maybe you're more mature than I thought."

"Try telling that to my aunt! She thinks I'm still a little kid."

"You'll have to change her mind, then. But I'd do it through your actions, not by throwing a temper tantrum. Those tend to be counterproductive, and lower that person's age in the eyes of everyone around them."

Dr. Wayland had never condescended to her, and her advice had always been thoughtfully offered. Danielle nodded. "We'll see how it goes."

Her aunt met her on the front steps of the gate building. "Feels good to be back, doesn't it."

"Feels nice and warm," Danielle said, "and I like that."

"I'm glad to be home." She looked at Danielle critically. "Do you really want to study cooking?"

Danielle shrugged. "Perhaps. I'd rather study history, but Father gets wound up when I mention anything like that around him. I don't always agree with him, but I can see his point. A lot of what they taught us back in Tiburon really was crap. If you work at it you can get a pretty good education; I have a friend who's going to go to medical school, and she's proof of that. But you have to learn what's just 'feel good' stuff, what's important, and how to hide that you're not buying the garbage they're peddling."

"So that talk about culinary school..."

"Was to defuse things. That's one of the few things they taught us that I've used a lot, especially when Father gets going. I still want to learn about history. Of course learning to cook might be pretty nice just for its' own sake."

Her aunt pondered that as they rode home, but as they passed a grocery store, Aunt Jessica paused. "You go on," she told Uncle Jack. "Danielle and I have to do some shopping for dinner."

The next hour was a lot of fun. First, Aunt Jessica quizzed her closely about a dinner menu. Then they put together a shopping list. They split it up, and Danielle realized Aunt Jessica had given her the protein to buy. This meant she had to judge the beef, the marbling, the connective tissue, and so on. She finally bought the cut she thought would be best, and took it to the front, where her aunt was waiting with the vegetables.

Cooking it was even more interesting. Her aunt insisted on a marinade, and Danielle had to look it up in a cookbook and put it together. Her aunt pronounced the resulting mess satisfactory for their purposes. Reluctantly Danielle poked holes in the steak, and then dropped it into the marinade and covered it.

"Will it be done on time?" she asked.

"With time to spare," Aunt Jessica said. "You forgot the time difference between there and here. Now let's get busy with the rest of this."

"We're turning this into a regular feast."

"That's the idea. I'll help you with the prep work, but you'll do most of the cooking."

She kicked herself. Well, she'd sort of asked for it. She wondered how good a cook her cousin was. She'd seen Jenny helping in the kitchen once or twice, but never on a consistent basis.

"She knows the basics," Aunt Jessica said as she diced some carrots. "She knows enough that she won't starve whenever she moves out on her own. Hand me the celery."

Danielle slid that across, and then helped dice some bell peppers. They dropped them in some olive oil for a bit, and then her aunt transferred it to a pot with the other vegetables. "We'll let this cook down." She wiped her hands off. "Now what about dessert?"

"Are you sure you want one?"

"Why not? Nothing fancy, of course."

"Of course. What do we have in the pantry?"

They had some brownie mix. Danielle learned her first lesson in oven management. The brownies would finish in plenty of time to let the beef broil. But overall cooking time was reduced because the oven would already be heated.

Dinner was a success. Uncle Jack loved the braised beef, and the brownies went over very well. Danielle toyed briefly with the idea of becoming a professional cook after all. She wasn't sure, but she could see the point in knowing how to cook. Some day she wouldn't be living where she had an aunt who did the cooking. Some day she might even be married and have to do the cooking herself.

That was something her friends back in Tiburon hadn't really talked about. She wondered what other assumptions they had that would prove untrue. From listening to her father, and comparing her current classes with those back in the Bay Area, there were quite a few.

On Monday it was back to the grind of classes. During one of the breaks she returned to the thought she'd had the day before. She was learning stuff that nobody back in Tiburon seemed to know, except maybe Kendra. Why were things being dumbed down? What was the point of it all? Was it so everyone would be too dumb to understand what was going on? Maybe her father had a point. And if so, what could be done about it?

She mentioned that to a teacher after class. The teacher didn't smile, or smirk, or put her down. Instead the woman looked thoughtful. "You know, there's a serious lack of good ideas in this world. Why don't you try your hand at it?"

"You mean... ?"

"If you had total authority to change things, how would you do it? That's the easy question. The harder is, given everything, how would you make a change that is lasting and effective. I think you'll find that's a lot harder."

That evening, after her session with Fiona, she tried to just let her mind roam and see what it could come up with.

There were good teachers, they cared about education and got the lessons through to the kids almost despite everything else. But then there were the ones who didn't care. Some were out of their depth, others ... She smiled. Others were out to remake the world in some way, and teaching the young was the way they chose to do it.

The simplest thing, she decided, would be to evaluate the teachers, and fire all of those except the few who were good. Then what she'd learned kicked in. How do you choose the good ones from the rest? There would have to be an evaluation, and she knew from personal experience that when you 'evaluated', you had suck-ups. So you needed a test. But tests could be 'gamed'. She'd even had one teacher, one of the good ones, teach the class exactly how to take tests so you could maximize your scores.

Stumped, she chewed on the end of her pencil. This was a lot harder than it looked. She did have one idea: those who taught 'feelings' and politics were out. That would get rid of half the teachers right there. She didn't care about how the trees felt, as far as she knew, trees didn't have emotions. You needed a brain or a central nervous system to have feelings, and trees didn't.

Well, she said finally, there was always the stand-by that Mr. Emerson recommended: gather information and keep it in a folder. Revisit it from time to time and let her subconscious work on the problem. Mr. Emerson was one of the best teachers she'd had. It was too bad he'd been let go and Mrs. Wrigley had been hired in his place. That was a woman who shouldn't have been let near any kid, including her own.

Danielle jotted a few more notes, and put it all in a binder. Clearly this project was going to take a lot more time and effort than she'd expected. And it was possible her father was correct: there might not really be an answer.



-------

Chapter 10


Danielle stared at the darkened ceiling of her room. Her mother was a spy. She couldn't get over that. But what did she spy on? Or who? As far as she knew, spies didn't just sit in one place and report on the weather, or the local news. Of course there was that one spy she'd read about in a romance novel. The girl had lived in Germany in World War 2, and had simply counted the railroad cars, and what they were carrying, as they rolled past her house every day. But that was fiction. Spies snuck into places, they photographed top secret things, and they had special gizmos and stuff like that.

But her mother was a housewife. She stayed at home most of the time, except for a little shopping and socializing. And yet she was a spy for the people in this place. Were they planning on invading or something? As far as she knew, they only had two or three of those door things. How could you mount an invasion through those? And to what end?

For a moment she fantasized that the people here were going to invade California, overthrow the state government, and impose a sensible school system. She hadn't been here that long, but she knew she had learned more in that brief time than she had all of the rest of her years in high school. She'd had to work for it, and somehow that made her feel better.

She wondered if there was a way she could ask her mother what was going on. She'd have to be discreet; she wasn't sure what her father would do if he found out.

She sighed and rolled over. That was another problem. Now that she was outside of it, she could see some of the craziness her father talked about. He was trying to make a difference, trying to stop something even he recognized as insanity. But there came a time when you just said "Enough!" and got out of the way. From the sound of it, he was almost at that point. But her father was stubborn, and he'd probably hang on until it was too late to do anything constructive.

This was all too much for someone her age to be dealing with. She knew she'd worry at this all night if she gave it half a chance. Finally she got up, put on her slippers and robe, and went downstairs to the study. In the past a little mindless TV watching would let her get to sleep.

"Huh," she muttered after checking the dozen or so different channels that were available. "Lots of bare skin."

Every movie seemed to include nude shots. She'd seen late night cable back in Tiburon, and the closer it got to midnight, the more skin was revealed. They didn't actually show all of the details, but you had a good idea what was going on. This was like that, but more so. For one thing, the guys were naked, and they showed everything. In some way she liked that. The cable movies would show plenty of female nudity, but the men were always carefully covered, at least in one part of their body. You didn't get that here. In five minutes she saw six naked guys, both front and back, and only one naked woman.

She checked the listing. This was a film shot in some ancient time. Those weren't fake slave collars they were wearing, but actual ones. She felt a little ill. That was reality. She preferred something a little more 'sanitized'. She changed channels at random.

This wasn't much better. There was a couple, and they were clearly making love. She'd seen enough fake sex on TV, and that x-rated movie one of the girls she used to hang with back in Tiburon had found, to know the difference. If you saw something, it wasn't flaunted. And from the look on the woman's face, she was totally into it. And when they were done you could see nearly everything, something they didn't show on the cable movies.

She watched that for a bit. She was a little surprised that she didn't get turned on by it. She wondered if that was because it was written for guys, who responded to visual cues. But that didn't make much sense. She saw much more of the guy's naked body than the woman's.

She realized she was beginning to analyze again. She'd found herself doing that more and more lately. Part of it was because her teachers were always asking her 'why'. That was another difference between here and Tiburon. Back there, you were told 'why'. Here you could ask, but you felt more satisfaction in working it out yourself.

The movie finally ended. She turned off the TV, not at all curious what would follow. Instead she went back to her room. This time sleep claimed her.

On Saturday Jenny asked if she wanted to go bike riding.

"I thought you'd have a date or something."

"Not this weekend. He's visiting family, and so I'm at loose ends."

"Where did you think of going? I don't want to do too many hills. I don't think I'm up to that."

Jenny shrugged. "I thought we'd take the train up the valley a ways, and then ride back. If we get tired, we could catch the train the rest of the way."

Danielle frowned. "I thought there weren't any roads on the valley floor. I thought it was, you know, all given over to crops and stuff."

"There's a road," Jenny said. "It runs right next to the tracks. It's how the farmers get their tractors and wagons from one field to another."

"Oh. Sure, why not?"

"Good. Let's pack a lunch. Bring some money, too, in case we stop somewhere and do a little shopping."

"I don't have much."

Jenny waved that off. "You need to get a job, but we'll talk about that some other time. Today let's just get out and enjoy the day."

Danielle was all over the street on her bicycle, at least at first. She almost took a spill, and only avoided it by dragging both feet on the ground. She didn't want to admit it had been years since she'd been on a bike. She used to be pretty good at riding, but like a lot of things, that had fallen by the wayside from lack of practice. Bike riding was something the 'cool' kids didn't do. It was dorky or something. After a while it was acceptable again, but you had to have a bike helmet and special biker clothes. She noticed nobody did that here. There wasn't a bicycle helmet in sight, and nobody wore the sleek riding clothes that were common back in Tiburon.

Jenny set a fast pace, shaking her head and let her hair stream out behind her. Danielle had to peddle furiously to keep up, finally doing so when Jenny pulled over at the edge of town.

"Why so fast?"

"I love the feel of wind in my hair," Jenny said. Her cheeks were flushed and she was smiling from ear to ear.

"I haven't ridden in a while. I was having a hard time keeping up."

"I promise I'll go slower in the future." She turned and pointed up the valley. "See that outcrop in the distance? That's where we're going, at least at first."

Danielle squinted. "Is it my imagination, or is there a town up there?" She could see some buildings on the slope.

"That's Outlook. You can see quite a bit from the top."

"We don't have to peddle up that, do we?"

"Oh no! They have a way to get up there. C'mon, let's go."

"Just not so fast."

Jenny laughed. "Spoilsport, but all right, not so fast."

Danielle had to admit that it was kind of fun. The wind in her hair and against her bare legs felt good. Once out of the town and its trees, the day turned out to be pretty warm. She wasn't going to admit it to anyone, but on days like this a skirt was probably cooler than shorts. Now if she could just stop wanting to push it down so people didn't see too much...

It took a couple hours of steady peddling to get to Outlook. Jenny stopped frequently, pulling off for this reason or that reason. It was obvious she could have kept going, but this seemed a polite way to let Danielle keep up without admitting it.

"The noise of the falls is so constant that you don't notice it," she said at one point. "That's one of the reasons I like coming out here. It can be so quiet."

Danielle could hear a few birds, and the soft whoosh of the tram as it went past, but that was it. The closer they got to Outlook, the more the breeze picked up. It cut what could have been a stifling day into something that was fun to be out in.

They got to the base of Outlook a little after noon. They had to wait while a train unloaded a few passengers. They joined them in a sit-down escalator, seats that rode a cogged-track up the steep side of the hill. Jenny locked her bike in a rack and sprawled on one of the seats. "Tuck your skirt in," she said. "A bunch of us from school came here last year, and the wind flipped our skirts practically up to our faces."

The breeze felt good, but it got stronger as they rose. One gust threatened to do just what Jenny had described. Danielle finished the trip up the hill with everything tucked in tight and her hands holding her skirt just to make sure.

Outlook was a town built on terraces, much like Upper and Lower. But these terraces had been carved into the side of the hill. The escalator only took them to the lowest terrace, and they had to use steps after that.

"The houses are on the other side," Jenny said as they climbed. "They don't have the view that the businesses have. They get a much more dramatic one, instead."

"Better than this?" Danielle gestured. They could see out over the whole valley. Valley's End and Terminus were green splotches to the right, and farm fields stretched out to her left, contained in a way by the other side of the valley. She tried to estimate how high they were, and gave up. They had to be at least 500 feet up, maybe more. Her eye could see the bottom of the hill, but it was far enough away that it didn't quite feel real.

"What if you fall?" she asked as they resumed climbing.

"That's why there are landings every 20 feet," Jenny said. "And there's a big net, too."

Danielle's heart was racing from the effort when they turned off on the next terrace. It was like a plaza, with shops on either side. Jenny made directly for a store selling shaved ice. She handed one to Danielle and took a healthy sip of the other.

"Feels good, doesn't it."

Danielle nodded. "Great." She needed something to cool her down.

"Dad says an ice-cold beer tastes best when you've been working hard."

"I didn't know he drank much."

"He doesn't. I think he only does it when he's been working in the yard." She took another sip. "We could have the same thing back home, but it wouldn't taste this good."

They explored the rest of the stores, but didn't buy anything. Most of the things she saw were things available in the stores back in Valley's End. Danielle noticed that just like back in Valley's End, there weren't dressing rooms in the stores selling clothes. She'd wondered about that. Were you supposed to take it home to try something on? Or maybe she was just missing something. She was going to ask Jenny, but her cousin was already out the door and headed for the stairs.

"You have to see the view of the mountains," Jenny said. "After that, maybe we should head home."

Danielle checked her watch. It was already mid-afternoon. She wondered where the day was going. It didn't seem that long since they'd left home.

The view from the top was everything Jenny had promised. The mountains were like a wall of snow and stone, and seemed close enough to touch.

"They aren't," Jenny said in a quiet voice. "They're at least 20 miles away, but..."

The slope in front of them wasn't as abrupt as the one that faced the valley. There were sidewalks here, not steps, and kids playing and riding. Danielle saw something she'd seen in Valley's End: parents were where they could watch the kids, but they weren't trying to direct the play, turn it into something "productive", whatever that meant, or otherwise interfere. Back in Tiburon there was the constant worry of some weirdo snatching a kid; if that happened here there would be at least a dozen adults right there.

She walked off to one side. She could see part of the valley, and a few houses. She could also hear laughter and the squeal of kids. Curious, she followed a brick path over to some steps. She stopped at the top, looking at the scene below her.

It was a swimming pool; it was more than that, it was several pools together. Kids were playing at one of them, and adults were at another. And everyone was naked.

That took a few seconds to register. There wasn't a bathing suit in sight. Everyone, from the youngest kids to adults with white hair was bare-ass and buck naked. It looked a lot like what she'd seen in Lower, but more so.

"They don't have anything on," she told Jenny when the girl stopped next to her.

"You'd think putting the pool here would make it too cold," Jenny said in a matter-of-fact voice. "That breeze wouldn't be very nice if you came directly out of the pool."

"Are these people from Upper and Lower?"

"No. As far as I know, they're all from around here."

"But they're naked."

"That's just how people go swimming around here. C'mon, I feel like another shaved ice. And then we'd better start back."

Jenny clearly wasn't going to answer any questions, at least about all the naked people. Who else could she ask? She thought of Aunt Jessica. Maybe. Fiona. She probably knew all about this, and she didn't hesitate to offer her opinion if you asked.

"Oh, that." Fiona chuckled when she saw her after school on Monday. "It's one of the few sensible things people up here do."

"You mean it's this way everywhere?"

"Oh, not in Center. Actually, come to think of it, it only seems to apply here in Three Valleys. I sort of think of it like the Roman baths. Of course here they have men and women together; I understand that in Rome that wasn't the case. Of course given some of the things I've read, the Romans would have had huge orgies if they had put men and women together. That's one of the good things here, no touching."

"I wondered."

"They get enough of that in school. No, this is so much like home ... Say, let's go after class! I could do with a swim."

"What?"

Fiona took her elbow. Instead of turning right at the corner, they turned left. After a block they entered a park. Danielle could hear the sounds of running water and kids laughing.

"You don't expect me to go naked, do you?"

"Why not? Its not like people haven't seen each other in the buff before."

"They haven't—"

"Seen you naked? True, but when everyone's nude, no one is. You'll see."

The idea of being naked in front of a bunch of people she didn't know scared her. She'd been naked in the locker rooms at school in Tiburon, but those were other girls, and anyway, you didn't really look. The other times she'd been naked in front of people it had been at those parties she'd gone to. But those were different. For one thing, it had been kind of dark, so the boys really didn't get that good a look at things. The boys stood out—of course—but you sort of didn't look. The boys weren't into showing off, either.

She'd been topless a few times; that seemed mostly all right because it was just the other girls, and everyone was trying to get a tan without many lines. Of course there was that time they'd gone down to the bay and removed their tops, but again it was just the other girls she saw at school. This was different. People were going to see a lot more than just her boobs.

Before she could find a polite way to say no, it was too late. They were in the locker room. It was like every other locker room Danielle had seen. There were lockers—Fiona rented a pair—with benches in front. There was a dirty towels pile, and showers around the corner. There were two women, both middle-aged there, and they had a couple of kids with them. As Danielle watched, they all finished undressing, picked up some towels they'd put on the benches, and walked out.

Danielle's fingers seemed frozen as she undid her buttons and zipper. Fiona had blithely stripped down to her skin, just like she did at home. Danielle reluctantly did the same, and contrived to hold her towel so it covered things.

She didn't expect to see an older man, towel over his shoulder, come walking right toward her. He only had a slight tan, and he definitely wasn't a gorgeous hunk. He looked, in fact, like some of the men who'd been at the barbecue, only a little older. She tried not to look, but she almost couldn't help it: his thing wobbled as he walked. She hastily averted her eyes.

There were women sitting on lounge chairs. Everything was visible, and like the man, they weren't beauty queens. They seemed so totally casual about what they were showing. Their kids were running around; some were teenagers, some were barely walking. They were all naked, and they seemed oblivious to the whole idea.

Jenny and her boyfriend were standing next to the pool, talking with some kids their age. Danielle stole a glance between Jenny's boyfriend's legs. The last time she'd seen him naked his thing had been hard. She hoped he had a great personality, Jenny clearly hadn't chosen him for his size.

Speaking of Jenny ... She'd seen her cousin's body as she did it with her boyfriend, but there hadn't been much that had been visible. Now, though. After a second she looked away, feeling the heat on her face. She had a much better body than her cousin. Her chest was a little bigger, her waist was a little narrower, and she definitely had nicer legs.

She wanted to laugh at what she was thinking. She was looking at the other girls as competition.

Fiona must have followed where Danielle had been looking. "That's a social no-no," she murmured quietly. "Guys don't always have a reaction, even back home. Take a look at how many guys are lying on their stomachs. That's usually a good sign that they have a stiffy."

That word, and the absurdity of the moment caught up with her, and Danielle repressed a giggle, but only with difficulty. "A stiffy?"

Fiona shot her a glance. "You know what I mean. Of course up here they have a direct way of taking care of it. Back home in Seaside a guy has to wait for it to go down. Rumor has it that sometimes they have to take things, you know, 'in hand'."

"Oh." Danielle felt her cheeks warm up again. She remembered a party at Patti Campbell's when she and several other girls had knelt in front of a bunch of guys and the boys had used their hands to get themselves off. She'd been surprised at how warm their stuff had felt when it landed on her face, and how much work she'd had to go through to get it out of her hair before she'd gone home.

These guys, though, seemed to have their things tucked in right next to their bodies, just like that guy Aunt Jessica had taken her to see in Lower. She wondered what kind of internal discipline it took not to get excited by the naked girls that were standing next to them. Maybe that was what Fiona meant when she said that when everyone was naked, no one was. That's when she realized she'd let the towel slip. It was in her hand hanging down at her side. Everyone could see her, and yet nobody seemed to be paying any attention at all.

She and Fiona settled on a pair of lounge chairs. For a moment Danielle thought of draping her towel over her lap. But that would make her stand out. She didn't want that. So she crossed her legs instead.

She looked everywhere she could, but then came to her senses. This was just like a locker room, where it wasn't polite to stare. She consciously tried to not stare, even if there were some guys who absolutely riveted her attention. And some women.

That bothered her a little. She was looking at the women more than she was at the guys. It couldn't be lust, just the idea of touching another girl, especially if they were both naked, disturbed her. But she had to wonder: did the woman next to the fence have too big a butt? Were a different one have artificial boobs? And what about...

She closed her eyes and tried to put it all out of her mind. The sun did feel good, and so did the slight breeze. It stirred her hair and tickled her skin, and that was kind of a neat feeling. Was this what Fiona liked about going nude? She'd have to ask her some time.

Fiona got up and dove in the pool. After a bit Danielle joined her. The water distorted everything so she couldn't see much. She could tread water and look, but it was better if she kept her head down and swam.

After a while Fiona got out. "I suppose we should get on home and get some studying done. It's getting pretty late."

"I'd rather stay," Danielle said.

"All the more reason to get going." Fiona toweled her hair and started for the locker room. Reluctantly Danielle followed her. In a way she was happy to get dressed. Only now she felt more exposed than when she'd been naked. She didn't know why, either. Maybe it was because she was more aware of her clothes than before.

That night, after her homework was done, she had to choose between another movie that would undoubtedly feature a lot of skin, or the news. She decided on the news because she thought she'd had her fill of naked bodies. Besides, if she was going to live here she had to know what was going on. Of course she was also curious how the news was reported in Three Valleys compared to the Bay Area. After a while she decided she really couldn't see much difference; the news was the usual mix of hard news, weather, sports, and soft, feel-good stories. One thing did surprise her: the older, pot-bellied man with the hair combed over his pink scalp that she'd seen at the pool turned out to be the Governor of Three Valleys. Somehow he didn't seem so imposing when he was naked.

Fiona confirmed that the next day. "That's what I like about going to the pool. All the formal barriers go down, and you can talk to someone people-to-people. They should do that in Center. Of course you'd freeze to death half the year because it's so close to the ice sheet, but that could be good, too. You'd have fewer politicians."

Danielle dutifully joined in the chuckle. She'd had swimming that day in school, and that reminded her of her mother's comment about gym. As far as she could tell, gym was ... gym. She felt a little more aware of her bathing suit, but that was all. There were boys, but they were at the other end of the pool, and anyway, they had their own locker room.

Could she go back to that park? She'd have to be naked, and she wasn't sure she could do that again. It wasn't that everyone would be looking at her. Hardly anyone had, and she wasn't sure if she should be relieved, or resentful. She'd been naked in groups before, but those had been those parties back in Tiburon. She hadn't seen anyone coming on to anyone else at the pool, but there was that chance, and she didn't want to go through that ever again.

She didn't mind the nudity at Fiona's, but that was because they were all girls, and it was the way they'd been brought up. That, she decided firmly, was not for her.

Nobody had told her about the nudity, which made her wonder what else was going on that she didn't know. There were probably all sorts of things. She could show people around Tiburon, and never mention some of the other things going on, the parties, the drugs, the trouble some kids got into. Those things would never come up. That was probably the case here.

She rolled over and tried to get comfortable. The trouble was, how could you determine what you didn't know? That sounded like one of those trick philosophical questions. She'd have to leave that to people who were a lot smarter.

She drifted off to sleep with images of naked guys dancing before her. But none of them had 'stiffys', to use Fiona's word. They weren't looking at her—she wasn't even sure they could see her—and that was good. She'd like to be a fly on the wall, but then, maybe not. It wasn't that she objected to seeing naked bodies, she just objected to people seeing her naked body.

But if everyone was naked, then nobody was. What of that?

She turned over again. If people were naked at these public swimming parks, were they naked in the swimming pools in school? That was something she could ask Jenny or her aunt. And if they did do that, were they all naked in the pool at the same time? Probably not. In her experience teenage boys got 'stiffys' very easily. She remembered a dance where she'd had to dance with different boys. Every one of them had gotten hard.

Good, she thought sleepily. There are limits. Besides there were a lot of adults at a public pool, and that would help keep things in hand. She yawned and tried to giggled at the thought of keeping things 'in hand'.

She'd definitely have to talk with Jenny some time real soon, and maybe Aunt Jessica, too. This was something she thought they would answer.

So many questions. Every time she turned around they were there. This whole place was a puzzle, a strange mix of 1950s sitcom, naked people, history, and so on. In some way she liked it better than in Tiburon. Back there she had learned that there were very few limits, and every time someone found one, somebody would attack it. Here there were limits, people knew them, respected them, and lived by them.

She turned over one last time. She liked having some structures around her. She felt safer that way. No more parties, no more having to see a doctor for a 'procedure'. Maybe the older ways weren't so bad after all.



-------

Chapter 11


Danielle was leaving her last morning class when the teacher handed her a note. "You have a visitor, a Dr. Wayland. She wanted to see you during."

What now? Danielle thought. She didn't feel like another physical. They took too long, and they got into things that had happened in Tiburon that she'd rather not think about.

Dr. Wayland was waiting for her in the public lounge next to the school's offices. "Have a seat," she said, gesturing to the couch in the corner. "This is just a follow-up."

"To see how I'm doing?"

"Mostly. It's been a little while since you and I checked in with each other. I'm sure you have some questions, and so do I."

"What puzzles me," Dr. Wayland said after Danielle had made herself comfortable, "is that I thought you'd be angry about coming here. I mean, without any explanation you were hauled away from your friends and family. I expected more of a reaction from you."

Danielle shrugged. "I was, at first. But a few days after I came here I began thinking." She saw the expression on Dr. Wayland's face. "I do think."

"I didn't say you didn't. I'm curious about what you thought."

Danielle was quiet for a few seconds. "It started at school. One day I was the first one out the door, and I stood there watching the girls. I realized none of them were pregnant. I asked Jenny about her school—by the way, I'm still not sure why I didn't go to her school—and she told me that she couldn't recall a girl there getting pregnant. A couple of days later we were at a concert in the park, and the only ones who were pregnant were married."

"I take it that's something you didn't expect."

"Every high school I've heard of back home has between three and six girls pregnant in the last two classes. A lot of schools have a day care center to take care of the babies."

"We have better conception control here," Dr. Wayland said, "and there's no social stigma about using it."

"Yeah, that." Danielle looked at the corner of Dr. Wayland's office and scowled. "I can't believe I was so dumb. I mean, everyone knows that's how you get pregnant, and I was, twice."

"You told me there was a girl in your school who didn't bow to the pressure of her classmates."

"Kendra."

"Why was she so different?"

Danielle thought a bit. "Kendra's a brain," she said finally, "and there were several girls who resented that." She held up her hand. "Don't ask me why, either. They were just ... that way." She grinned at a memory. "She also understood revenge, and that was important."

"Oh? In what way?"

"Our sophomore year Stacey Brown swapped this yellow lipstick for the color Kendra wore. It made her look hideous. There were a lot of giggles that day, but Kendra didn't show any emotion. The next day Kendra poured pig's blood on the crotch of Stacey's jeans. Stacey was so embarrassed she tried to go home, but the school had a policy that you couldn't unless you had permission from the principal."

Dr. Wayland smiled. "I take it that was the last time anyone tried that kind of stunt."

"No, not really. Deirdre Davis poured this stuff she got from her boyfriend all over Kendra's clothes during gym. She didn't realize that Kendra kept spare clothes in her locker."

"I take it she figure red out who did it." Danielle nodded. "What did she do?"

"The next day in gym, when Deirdre was in the shower, Kendra swapped out all of her clothes. The blouse looked just like what Deirdre had, but it was a lot thinner. She gave her this really small micro-miniskirt, shorter and tighter than what cheerleaders wore. When she was standing, it barely came down far enough. If it'd been a flip skirt it might have been all right, but when Deirdre sat down, it rode up above the crease where her legs join her body. She had to sit with a notebook in her lap, and when she stood up she had to keep her legs crossed until she tugged the skirt down far enough."

"That would be inconvenient, but shouldn't have been too bad."

"Kendra told me that when you get revenge on someone, you needed to go over the top so they wouldn't even think of trying to get back at you."

"So she did more?"

Danielle nodded. "I don't know where she found 'em, but Deirdre didn't realize that the panties she had on were crotchless. Everything showed, and I mean everything. And the bra was practically transparent. You could see her nipples and everything."

"Something like that..."

"Deirdre was the laughingstock of the school. What hurt worse, though, was the school was having some sort of parents' day, and all of them saw Deirdre. You can imagine what they thought!"

"Was Deirdre one of the more popular girls?"

"She organized most of the parties where ... where..."

"Where things happened to you."

Danielle nodded.

"What happened when she came back to school?"

"She tried to accuse Kendra of doing that to her, but there wasn't any evidence. Nobody could figure out how Kendra did it. She's a real brain, though. Everyone was convinced she'd done it, but without any proof..." Danielle shrugged.

Dr. Wayland shook her head. "Wow. I bet the girls decided to leave her alone after that."

"All of that happened just a week or so before I came here, so I don't know what finally went down."

"The trouble with doing something like that is that the girl who was humiliated might get physical. We had a girl, much like you, come in here about a year ago. She was from Denver, and she'd done something like that. The girl she humiliated slashed her face with a razor blade."

"I don't know if those girls would go that far, but you can never tell."

"We've gotten off the topic," Dr. Wayland said. "So you got to thinking."

Danielle nodded. "This place is so ... so 1950s; it's straight out of some of those old-time comedies. But what struck me was that I wasn't living like I did back in Tiburon. I didn't have to have a procedure—"

"An abortion."

"An ... abortion," Danielle forced out. "It sounds better when you call it 'a procedure'."

"Calling it 'a procedure' is a way to deny what was happening," Dr. Wayland said quietly. "Go on."

Danielle took a settling breath. "I had two of them. Girls here don't seem to even have to worry about that whole situation."

"There are girls elsewhere in the Project that get pregnant when they're 15. Things like that do happen, just not in Three Valleys. When you came here your aunt had us put you on a very effective conception control, what you probably learned as birth control. We also take other steps; unexpected pregnancies don't happen here."

"Well, I'm not planning on hopping into bed with a boy, not any time soon."

"Good. So it was the lack of pregnancies that changed your mind."

"That, and what I was learning in school. This is nothing like I saw in Tiburon. There's almost no comparison. This is like what I'd expect to learn in college"

"I take it you don't think very highly of the schools in Tiburon."

"You should see them! If it isn't political, it's 'feel-good' crap." She shook her head. "Don't even get me started! My Dad may think it's a terrific education, but he's fooling himself."

"That isn't what we're here to discuss," Dr. Wayland said. "So, on the whole you like it here."

"I didn't say that," Danielle said. "I just think I'm better off here. There are some things I don't understand, what goes on at the pool is one, but I'm getting used to it."

Dr. Wayland wrote some notes. "How are you getting on making friends?"

"I've got a couple. I've sort of forgiven Jenny for ratting me out."

"Oh?"

"Well, I still resent it in a way, but she was trying to look out for me."

"Um-hm. What of any others?"

Danielle smiled. "I've got this one, Fiona, she's from Seaside. She's ... different."

"Because she's a nudist?"

"Mostly. She's been helping me with my math. Have you ever been to Seaside?"

"A couple of times. I like to go shopping in Upper & Lower. You can find some great bargains there. Does the nudity bother you?"

"It did at first. But, I don't know, she's so unconscious about it. I mean, if I was naked, I'd be aware of it all of the time. But with her..." Danielle giggled. "Most people wear clothes, but Fiona is different. I think the best way to describe it is that you know she's naked under her clothes, and if she could, she wouldn't wear them.

"Did you like it in Seaside?"

Dr. Wayland shrugged. "I'm not a nudist. It isn't for everyone, and quite frankly, I like wearing clothes."

"Me, too."

Dr. Wayland made a few more notes. "I like that you're making friends. Any boyfriends?"

"Not really," Danielle said with a shake of her head. "I think it's too soon for one."

"Eventually..."

"Yeah, eventually. I think I'm still getting over what happened in Tiburon."

"You're a very smart girl," Dr. Wayland said. "The other girls who've come here from the US haven't reacted the way you have. They were still fighting it years later."

"Mother always said I had a practical streak about me."

"Which has turned out to be a good thing. All right, I'll drop in on you in a while."

"No medical tests?" Danielle smiled. "I'd expected you to poke me with needles or something."

"We can, but a person's attitude is important to their physical health, and that's what I was checking on today."

"What did the doctor say?" Robin asked when Danielle stopped in the lunch room for a sandwich.

"That I'm healthy and likely to stay that way. Did you finish your paper for History?"

"Yeah, but it's probably just a bunch of garbage. Did you?"

"All but the conclusion. One occurred to me, but I'm not sure I proved it."

Robin shrugged. "Write it anyway. The teacher will tell you."

"Yeah, but I want to know. I don't want some teacher telling me the answer, I want to work it out myself."

"And have the teacher tell you that you're right? That's what'll happen."

"Only partly. I want her to show me any errors I made."

Robin smiled. "You'll go far, Danni, a lot farther than I will." She looked thoughtful. "We're a small school, but I wonder if we qualify for the scholarships."

"Scholarships? In what?"

"The top three kids in any graduating class get a scholarship to college. We only have 10 or 12 kids graduate every year, so it might not apply to us. Still, it's worth checking."

"Do they say what the scholarship is?" Danielle asked.

"No, you can study anything you want. I have an uncle who works for a woman who chose engineering. He told me it's obvious she didn't skate through on her looks. Oh, she's nice enough looking, but he said she really knows her stuff. I'm not surprised. Something like engineering I'd expect a woman would have to work twice as hard."

"I don't know if I'd want to study engineering," Danielle said. "I kind of like the history stuff, and how people lived."

"This is the perfect place for it." Robin looked at the clock. "We've got to go. We've got like two minutes to get to our next class, and you know what a tyrant Mr. Brickman can be if someone is late."

After dinner that night Aunt Jessica brought up a subject Danielle knew had to be coming. "Have you thought of getting a part-time job. You need some money of your own."

"I have, but when would I find time for it?"

"I'm sure we can come up with something, weekends, maybe. I've been looking, and there are a couple of places that might be interested in you."

"What would I be doing?" Danielle remembered her father saying that he didn't want his kids working in drudge jobs. Her sister had asked him what that meant, but never got a clear answer. Privately Danielle took it to mean that they weren't to work at all.

"What time should I interview with them?" Danielle finally asked.

"I'll call them back and find out. It'll probably be early evening."

Danielle nodded. "Whatever."

"I'll let you know when the interviews are."

Danielle nodded and went up to her room. Jenny's door was open and she was studying. They nodded politely at each other. She wondered if Jenny was going to get a job. She'd have to ask Aunt Jessica about that.

The interview was awkward and perfunctory. The couple lived in Upper & Lower, and owned a restaurant there. To Danielle's relief, they were opening a snack place in Valley's End, so she wouldn't have to get naked.

"We need a girl to work the counter," the woman said. She was heavy-set, with short auburn hair, and a wearing a hideous green fingernail polish. "You'll have to come down to Upper & Lower for some training, but after a weekend of that you'll start at the store."

"What would I do?"

"Wait on anyone who comes to the counter, keep the counter clean and bussed, and so on. It's fairly basic, but if this does as well as we think, you'll have a job when we expand, and might even be in line for a promotion."

"What would my hours be, and what about pay?"

"Hours? Oh, eight on Sunday, and at least four on Saturday, maybe more if business warrants it. And pay?" She looked at her husband, who nodded slightly. "$4.50/hour."

Danielle was surprised. She'd expected a lot more; kids back in Tiburon who worked at McDonalds made $9.00 an hour, but after remembering the prices she'd seen, decided that wasn't such a stingy offer. Besides, these people didn't have a minimum wage.

"I'll take it."

The woman, Mrs. Guthrie, nodded as if she'd expected that response. "Then I'll see you about noon on Saturday."

"Will I have to..." Danielle gestured at her clothes."

"Only if you want to, dear. I know you're not used to it, so I expect you'll be uncomfortable about it."

Danielle nodded. "I am."

"Some people are that way." Mrs. Guthrie got to her feet. "All right, see you on Saturday."

That night, alone in her room, she wondered if there were other jobs out there that paid more. She hadn't really looked, this one had been handed to her almost on a platter. The pay seemed hardly worth it. One of the girls she knew in Tiburon, not a member of the 'in-crowd', had gone on and on about how much was taken out in taxes, fees, and other things. The girl had made $9/hour, but her take-home seemed more like $3.50. Danielle had no idea what the taxes were here, or any of the other things that got taken out of a paycheck. She sighed. Time would tell if this was a good idea.

Saturday came all too soon. She had butterflies in her stomach all morning, and had to swallow a dozen times during the short walk between the cable car and the restaurant. She'd worried about how people would react to her clothes, but one look at the kitchen was enough. Everyone was dressed.

"You don't cook in bare skin," one young man said. "That's the first lesson they teach you about a grill." He shrugged. "This being Upper & Lower, it's no big deal."

She almost had to laugh when she began to work the counter. People were visible from the waist up. She got a lot of views of bare breasts, as well as a few halters and tee-shirts. After a while, as she used to the pace of the work, all of that skin began to fade into the background. Oh, a few things stood out, but that was all. There was one guy with so much hair she was amazed.

"He's a regular," Gloria, the girl who was training her said. "We call him the Abominable Snowman."

"I can see why. It almost looks like he pinned a rug there."

"Doesn't it? But no variety. At least a rug has some color, not mid-brown."

Danielle had to work to keep the smile off of her face when she heard the others begin calling that customer the Rug Man. Not exactly complimentary, but fitting.

Then there was the woman who rested her bare breasts on the counter. Somebody had left a little ketchup that nobody had wiped up yet, and the woman plopped herself right in the middle of it. Danielle didn't have the heart to tell her what she'd done, and found it hard to suppress her giggles.

Gloria, though, just laughed. "That happened to me last year at the fair. I got too close to this soup wagon, and someone spilled some tomato soup." She shook her head. "I got it all over my boobs, and didn't realize it."

"I'd think you would."

She shook her head. "It wasn't cold, I'd have noticed that. It was about body temperature, and it wasn't until a friend pointed it out to me. I was messy as those little kids that came by here a few minutes ago."

Danielle had seen a couple of kids, toddlers really, who'd had messy faces and bodies, always from ice cream. She had to admit it made a lot of sense to just rinse them off.

"Anywhere else," Gloria continued, "and I'd probably have had to go home to change, but there in Seaside, I just wiped it off. Sure looked silly, though."

The shift came to an end, finally. Danielle had a seat in the sunshine behind the place. Gloria joined her a few minutes later. She'd peeled off her clothes, and leaned back against a box of produce, just enjoying the sun.

"How do your feet feel?"

"They hurt," Danielle said. She picked one up and checked, but there weren't any blisters.

"That'll go away. You did fine today. You need to work on your speed a little, but that'll come w8ith experience."

"I hope so. I had this feeling I was always just a little behind."

"Common. I was that way my first couple of days. You'll do better tomorrow."

"There was something I was wondering. Aren't there any permits from a Health Board or something?"

"A Health Board? What's that?"

"You know, they regulate cleanliness in food places."

"Why on earth would they do that?"

"You know, to prevent the spread of disease and stuff."

"We do that anyway. There's always somebody cleaning up around the place. Customers stay away from dirty places. Who has a Health Board?"

"Um, forget it. It was something I'd heard about, that's all."

"What a silly idea."

She thought about that on her way home. She really saw very little governmental presence. Oh, there were the police, but that was about it. She looked around. She couldn't see any real government group doing something. But the place seemed neat and clean, and as far as she could tell, there was very little crime.

"People don't see the need for the government to get involved in a lot of things," her aunt said. "Mostly, they feel, it's none of the government's business. I know you have all sorts of things back in California, but they never came over when people moved here. There's the police, you've seen them, and the courts. That's about it."

"What about..." She wrinkled her brow. "What about a Post Office? And utilities?"

"There were private mail carriers back in Tiburon. You had paperboys, or newspaper carriers, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah."

"That's a form of mail. There are a couple of companies that do that sort of thing."

"But isn't that, I don't know, inefficient?"

"So? They compete against each other, and that helps hold down the prices. And as for the rest, the same thing."

"But ... but ... monopolies." That was what she remembered from a civics class. "They seize control, and then they raise the rates and make a fortune."

"You say that as if it's a bad thing. If they raise the rates enough, someone'll start a company, underbid them, and take away customers."

Danielle knew that had to be wrong. That was capitalism at its most rapacious. J.P. Morgan, and Rockefeller, and all of those other fat cats. They were bad people, gouging the people and stuff like that.

"You mentioned utilities," her aunt continued. "Usually that's done through a co-op. I'll talk to one of your teachers and you can learn all about it."

Puzzled, Danielle let herself be sent off to study. She had homework to get done, and she knew her teachers wouldn't accept her new job as an excuse. She'd ask her teachers, surely her aunt was wrong about a few things, and get everything straightened out.

Sunday was more of the same. After work she considered removing at least her blouse and bra and getting some sun. Almost everyone around her was, and if there was one thing she really felt uncomfortable about, it was being the odd one out.

It was hard. Still, she'd been naked at the pool, what was that different here? And it wasn't like there wee a lot of people around, she was practically alone back here.

Gloria came out about then, and handed her some sunscreen. "That's an awful lot of unprotected skin. Here, put this on. I use it all of the time."

"All of the... ?"

"I goop up before I leave my place. A lot of people do. That's why we don't burn. You have all of that skin that hasn't gotten any sun. You need this worse than I do."

Danielle felt a little self-conscious as she slathered the cream all over, but she knew Gloria was right. Skin that had never been exposed to direct sunlight was always in danger of sunburn. She'd seen that written about in dozens of magazine articles.

She still put her clothes back on to go home. Sitting behind a store with hardly anyone around was one thing. Riding the cable car and walking the streets of town were another.

Mrs. Guthrie called on Monday, and gave her directions to the location in Valleys End. "It's a grand opening," she added, "so keep that in mind. We're apt to be very busy, and I'll want you to work at least six hours on Saturday."

Danielle promised, and walked by the place after her tutoring session. She liked the idea of having a job. She'd have her own money. It wouldn't be much, but it would be more than she'd had before.

The 'Grand Opening' brought out a lot of customers. She got a bit frazzled as the hours wore on, and she knew she'd made mistakes with the orders, and even worse ones with the money, but when she reported for work on Sunday, nobody made any mention of it. The day was a blur, and when she got home she ate a little, and then went directly to bed. For the first time in a long time she didn't wake up before the alarm.

On Friday, when she got home, there was an envelope for her. It was from Mrs. Guthrie. Danielle was nervous opening it, thinking that she getting laid off. Instead there was a check for $110.00. She kept running her fingers over it. Her gross amount was $117, but there'd been some taken out for taxes. The rest was hers, and for a moment she thought of splurging it all on a shopping spree. Then sensibility took over. She'd take a few dollars out so she could do a little spending, but the rest she'd deposit in the bank on Monday. It was time, as her father used to joke, to stimulate the economy a little, and unlike some of the kids back in Tiburon, one of the classes here had convinced her that banks weren't evil repressive tools of the ultra-rich. They loaned money to businesses, and stimulated the economy that way.



-------

Chapter 12


"Do you think you could help me get a job where you're working?" Jenny asked a couple of days later.

"I thought you had something lined up."

"It fell through when they hired the daughter of the owner."

"I'll ask, but..."

"I know, no promises."

Danielle did ask, and had to break the bad news to her cousin. "There's nothing here in Valleys End. They do have an opening in Upper & Lower."

"It's better than nothing. When can I interview with them?"

"You'll have to be naked. I was told that's part of the job."

"So? I can take that."

By the end of the week Jenny was working as a waitress for the same people. Danielle was curious how Jenny was getting along on the job, and her cousin shrugged.

"It's a job, that's the important thing."

"I haven't seen your boyfriend around lately."

"He's busy with something, and will be back in a few weeks."

"You two aren't having problems, are you?"

Jenny shook his head. "I've known this thing of his has been coming for some time. It's part of his studies."

"Did he go to the... ?"

"Alternates? No, nothing like that. He's in West Bay doing a fisheries specialization. I originally thought that meant working on a fishing boat, but he's working in the shipyard building or repairing fishing boats."

"That's ... different. It just seems odd not to see him around."

"I really miss him." Jenny sighed. "He'll be back in two weeks." She grinned. "We'll try to hold down the noise."

"I appreciate that. At least move your bed so the headboard doesn't keep hitting the wall."

"It's heavy."

"So? I'll help you."

As they were moving the bed, it was heavy enough it took both of them, Danielle took the opportunity to ask her cousin about the social life of Valleys End.

"There are plays and concerts nearly every night, as well as the movies. Why? Has some boy asked you out?"

"Well, I think he's nerving himself up to it, and I'm sort of nerving myself up to say yes."

"Oh, because of... ?"

Danielle nodded. "Believe me, Jenny, that sort of experience will turn you off to boys for some time."

"Huh. You just reminded me of a girl named Sandy that I know. She didn't get pregnant or anything, but her experiences with boys made her more interested in girls. She's got the killer body, hair, legs, boobs, face, you name it, she's got it, but when she got in the sack, boys left her cold and uninterested. The only time she got any interest was when she did it with a girl." She shook her head. "I know it happens, I just didn't expect to see it with my own eyes."

"She went to bed with a couple?"

"Of course it was..." Jenny's voice trailed off. "Anyway, yeah, she did. It was an eye-opener. She was really uncomfortable with the whole idea. I mean you're almost expected to go out with a boy, and when the great love of your life, or at least the great lust, is another girl..."

"I knew a couple of boys who were interested in other guys."?She snorted. "The teachers acted as if that was something special, but the other boys were really down on them, and the girls..."

"Bad?"

"Not really, we just treated them as one of the girls. When they got too close to us, and we quickly learned that these two couldn't keep a secret, we got to talking about things guys find uncomfortable, you know, like our periods, cramps, and things like that. I don't care how feminine a boy is, he can't really identify or fake that sort of thing."

Jenny nodded. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Still, it's better than it was. Mom was telling me about how boys like that were treated back in history. AT least girls were more private that way."

"Yeah, guys kind of flaunt it, girls don't."

"That's because we're sneakier. I think boys are seeking validation, you know, that their feelings are all right."

"Girls, too."

"Yeah, but we do that all of the time, not just if we're sleeping with another girl."

"True. So, you said plays, movies, and things like that?"

"Don't forget dancing. The church organizes a dance every Wednesday and Friday."

Danielle liked that. A dance at a church would be chaperoned. It wasn't that she thought anything would happen, it was just ... She remembered those parties, and lying on a blanket on the couch while a boy did his thing. She hadn't really enjoyed it. Oh, it felt pretty good, but it was over too quickly. About the time things began to feel really good, the boy would groan, and that would be it. She didn't think there'd be anything like that.

She hadn't looked to have a boyfriend. There was this one boy in school who was kind of cute, and they sat next to each other a couple of times a day. They talked, first it was just little things associated with class, but lately there'd been more personal things, what they liked or didn't like, comments about teachers or things they'd heard on the news, not too much out of the ordinary.

The school hosted social events, but she'd gone to Fiona's instead of taking part, which was probably a better investment of her time. This wasn't Tiburon. Here you only got good grades by earning them, not by just showing up. There you were more interested in the social scene; here it was something that you fit in around everything else.

Greg didn't seem like the boys back in Tiburon, either. Oh, he was interested in the same thing every teenage boy was, but boys here seemed more constrained. Back in Tiburon guys would come on to a girl at a party, and a girl had to learn how to say no. Of course in the group she hung with a girl was expected to say yes.

Did she like Greg? Sort of. He was a guy, and that made her pause. She wasn't sure how she'd act when they were alone. For that matter she wasn't sure how he would act. She hoped that it would be polite and respectful, not groping her body like she'd experienced.

As she sat at her desk she realized that if he asked her out she'd say yes. But it would depend upon what he asked her to. If it was somewhere where they'd be alone for an extended period, then she wasn't so sure. But if it was something like a church dance, well, that she'd like. There'd be adults around to keep things in hand.

She remembered having these same thoughts before going to a party in Tiburon. She'd counted on the other girls to keep things in hand. She hadn't expected to see a couple of them getting naked and doing things with the boys. And with two girls already naked, the pressure had been on the other girls to do the same. That had been the start of her problems.

The next day Greg walked up to her in the hall as she was taking out the books she'd need for her next two classes.

"Danni? Can I ask you something?"

She looked in his dark brown eyes, and smiled. It wasn't that she felt safe around him, she felt ... She liked being around him, and, yes, being safe was part of it.

"Ask me what?"

"Well, our church is having a dance tomorrow night, and..." He stopped, his ears turning red as he swallowed visibly.

"I'd like to go to it with you," she said.

"Can I pick you up at 6:30? The dance starts at 7:00."

"Sure. I'll look forward to it."

A smile spread slowly across his face. "I'll ... I'll see you then."

I have to get back up on the horse some time, she thought as he walked away.

She mentioned it to Fiona that afternoon. "Which does make me curious," she added. "Do you have dances in Seaside?"

"Sometimes."

"Do you hold on to each other? Wouldn't that sort of provoke boys to, um..."

"Get a stiffy?? She smiled. "Yeah, it does. No, normally we dance without touching."

"And where do you look when you're dancing with a boy."

Fiona laughed. "All right, yeah, I look. But so do boys. I swear there are times I think boys are dancing with a pair of boobs. But it is kind of interesting to watch their things bounce and wiggle."

Danielle laughed along with her friend. "I didn't think you could ignore that sort of thing."

"It's very hard to..." And then Fiona blushed. "Oops, I mean ... That didn't come out quite the way I meant it.

"That's okay. Up here you and the boy hold on to each other, and boys get hard. I don't think they can help it."

"No, probably not. It's built into their genes."

"We just don't tell them the effect it has on us girls."

"Goodness, no! It might encourage them or something."

"I didn't think boys needed much encouraging."

Fiona laughed again. "No, not really. They have one thing on their minds."

"So do we."

"We just don't admit it." Fiona cleared her throat. "All right, you have that dance, so we'll have a short session tomorrow so you can get ready."

"I appreciate it."

She spent part of the day trying to figure out what she was going to wear. School was simple: you had a uniform. It didn't really vary for boys, but girls had different skirts for different days of the week. She had her casual things she wore when she got home, and what she wore to work and to church. But she hadn't considered what to wear to a dance. She went through her closet, considering this and that, and trying to settle on something that was right. In the end she picked her white skirt and blouse combination. The skirt wasn't lined, but it wasn't that tight. When she looked at herself in the mirror there wasn't anything showing, so she presented herself to Aunt Jessica.

"I think that'll do," her aunt said. "You look nice in that."

Danielle smiled. It was funny. She would never have gone to her mother for approval, but she felt no problem going to her aunt. She wondered why that was.

The dance was fun, and Greg didn't try to presume. It felt strange holding a boy the first time, but then it was like any other dance. She let her mind drift with the music, just trying to exist in the moment.

He walked her home, and she was worried that he'd kiss her. This was a first date, and in Tiburon a girl usually kissed the boy on the first date. That was because the second date was for getting naked and letting him do what he wanted. But Greg saw her to the door and made no move to close the distance between them.

"I had a good time tonight," she told him.

"I had fun," he admitted. In the porch light she could see his ears turn red. "Would you like to do this again?"

She nodded. "I'd like that very much."

"Let's talk in school. Friday?"

"Can't stay out too late on Friday because I have a job on Saturday."

"So do I. Sure, let's talk tomorrow."

He let her slip in the door without trying anything. On one hand she was relieved, but on the other she was disappointed. She'd almost come to expect it.

"Well?" Aunt Jessica said, "How was it?"

"Fun," Danielle said. "I had a good time. We're going to try it again on Friday."

Aunt Jessica smiled. "Good. Do you want to talk some more about it?"

She hadn't really wanted to, but suddenly she felt the need. All of her worries had come bubbling to the surface, and she just had to let them out.

They talked in the kitchen, where else, and Danielle felt a whole lot better when she went up to her room. It wasn't that she felt bad about the date, just that she had to sort through her feelings.

They took their time walking home on Friday night. It was a beautiful night, and the dance had been fun. She really didn't want the night to end, but she did have to get up early on Saturday because she was opening, so it was with some sadness that she said good night to Greg.

That didn't stop her from staying up half the night, remembering the dance. The music had been a lot better at this one, and she'd just flowed along, melted into his arms. This was how a dance was supposed to be, and she liked how it was coming true.

She liked this kind of a date. She remembered the ones she'd had in Tiburon. Those had all seemed to end with her naked and putting up with the boy. This ... Greg made her feel like a precious vase, fragile, delicate, and pretty. She liked feeling that way.



-------

Chapter 13


Danielle was still laughing when she got home on Tuesday. Her aunt, who was watching something on TV, looked up. "You're in a good mood."

"It's this sign on the door at Fiona's," Danielle said. "It just says 'Clothes?'" She laughed again. "Apparently her sister keeps forgetting where she is and has left for school wearing what she'd have on in her hometown."

Aunt Jessica smiled. "I've heard of that happening from time to time. Does Fiona have that problem?"

"She still doesn't understand underwear," Danielle said. "I take that back. My friend Robin finally got her to start wearing panties. She told her to think about them as a towel that you always have with you."

Aunt Jessica nodded. "I've seen that in Upper & Lower. The residents carry towels around with them. They sit on them, mostly for sanitary reasons, though I was told they also protect your bare skin from any hot metal or plastic."

Danielle nodded. "Fiona said it's also to keep you from sticking to the plastic of a chair." She looked past her aunt at the TV. The screen had an aerial view of some town buried in white. "What's that?"

"Oh, a big blizzard has hit Center. These are live pictures. They get blizzards once or twice every winter, but this one seems stronger than usual."

"I've always wondered what it's like to be in one," Danielle said. "Winter back in Tiburon usually meant lower temperatures, and rain."

"It means the same thing here," Aunt Jessica said. "It gets down in the 50s at night, and we'll get drizzle that lasts for a week or so at a time. We're heading for one of those storms right now. Your friend's sister will probably have to put clothes on just to stay warm."

"I'm not sure I have anything that's suitable," Danielle said. "When Mom told me to pack, I didn't think to pack winter wear, except for my heavy jacket."

"That might be too much," Aunt Jessica said. "I can get your stuff from Tiburon Or, if you want, we can do a little shopping."

The idea of getting new stuff appealed to her. "Let's go shopping," Danielle said. "I suppose I have to get used to what's in the stores here."

Her aunt nodded. "What about tomorrow? The weather forecast said the storm should be here Thursday afternoon."

"I just have that paper to write," Danielle said, "and a math test on Thursday. So if we don't spend too long shopping, it should be all right."

Aunt Jessica smiled. "As soon as you get home, then."

Fiona looked miserable. She kept rubbing her arms and staring out the window. During lunch, Danielle asked her friend what winter was like in Seaside.

"More rain," Fiona said, "and it's warmer. It's cold out there today."

"It's worse in Center," another girl said. "Did you see? They got two feet of snow, and 60 mile an hour winds."

One of the girls in her English class nodded. "I lived in a small town near Center. Believe me, Fiona, this is nice. I'd much rather have this than two feet of snow."

"I miss making a snowman," a different girl said. She nudged the boy next to her. "My brother and I used to make these snowmen. We'd build them all up and down our street."

"Remember the time we accidentally blocked up Old Man Smith's front walk?"

The two laughed. "What a mess. Our Mom made us demolish the snowman, which was fun, too."

"Never made a snowman," Fiona said. "I don't think I'm likely to make one here, either."

"Not unless you go up to one of the glaciers," Robin said. "If you do, dress warmly. "There's one not too far from where we live, and the wind really cuts through you. We had to wear these really dark goggles, too, about like what my Dad wears when he's welding. The sun was out, and it was so blinding white that we would have been blind in a couple of minutes."

"The closest I've gotten to that," Fiona said, "was last year. "I have a cousin who lives in White Beach. They've got a whole mile of beachfront alongside the town, and the sandy is as white as a piece of paper."

"I bet it's warm," Robin said.

Fiona rubbed her arms. "Very warm, warmer than here in the summer."

"I'd love to be there right now," Robin said.

"You'd have to leave your clothes here," Fiona said.

"Oh. Yeah." Robin stared at the table. "Maybe."

Before Fiona could launch into a speech about the benefits and virtues of living naked, Danielle cleared her throat. "Where did you used to live so you were near a glacier?" she asked Robin.

"Oh, that was back in Teays. The northern edge of the state is the glacier. We lived in a small town that was about five miles from the foot of the glacier. The town's the base for all sorts of scientific teams that are doing research in the area. We get a lot of crazy weather there, so you always dress for the worst."

"What did your folks do there?"

"Dad did some sort of communications stuff, and Mom cooked. Usually the first thing the research teams wanted when they got off the ice sheet was a hot meal. I helped Mom in the kitchen from when I was about 5." She chuckled. "It taught me one thing, I never want to make my living as a cook. The hours are long, and can be fairly brutal. You cook until you're dead on your feet, then get up and do it all over again."

"I don't know," a girl said from down the table. "I like cooking. It gives me a chance to express myself."

"That's good for you," Robin said. "I bet you're doing fancy cooking. Mom didn't. It was meat and potatoes, seven days a week, with only a little variation. That got so boring. Nobody wanted creativity, just lots of food."

The girls all nodded. That made sense.

"So what brought you here?" Fiona asked.

"Dad's company landed a contract to build a radio-navigation system. We're doing three main towers, and a couple of smaller ones. The main towers are here in Valley's End, over on West Bay, and down the coast on a hill above East Beach." She shook her head. "I don't know where the smaller towers are."

"We almost went to West Bay," Fiona said. "The town is right on the border between Seaside and the county that's up there. I think they have a mixed school, which would have been fine by me."

"Mixed school?" Danielle asked. "What's that?"

"Half the students come from the Seaside part of town," Fiona said, "and half don't. That means you can go nude if you want." She plucked at the sleeve of her blouse. "I'd like that a lot better than wearing this thing."

"You're the only one at this table," Robin said. She lowered her voice and leaned over a little. "I don't mind nudity, but it's not for me. I could stare at a naked boy for some time."

"I'd want to do more than just stare at him," another girl said. "Of course with my luck my mother would be right there to keep an eye on me." She shook her head. "That's the problem with your mother being a teacher."

The other girl made sympathetic noises. Danielle agreed, but only up to a point. Having her mother at school, could be awkward. But maybe some things wouldn't have happened if her mother could have been along on a date back in Tiburon. She was far enough away from it now that she could actually think that.

Now that she thought about it, there were things about living here that she liked. She felt safe when she was out on a date. Greg had been very polite, and hadn't come on to her at all. Back in Tiburon her dates always got physical. She'd liked the kissing, but the boys didn't do enough of it. And afterward...

Why did I put up with it? she asked herself. I knew it was wrong, and yet...

She was still thinking of the things she didn't like about living in Tiburon—and the things that were good—when Aunt Jessica took her shopping. She forced her mind away from what might have happened to her in Tiburon, and concentrated on finding the right kind of coat and other winter things.

"Fortunately it only has to be waterproof," her aunt said, "but there's this one I just saw in the catalog that has a zipper lining in case you go somewhere where it's really cold."

Danielle thought of what it would be like to visit the ice sheet. It spanned the entire continent, and a good part of the Asian continent, too. Miles and miles of white with blowing snow; seeing something like that would be breathtaking.

"What else would I need if I went some place really cold?" Danielle looked at heavy woolen slacks, and heavy jeans. "These?"

"Possibly." Her aunt looked at her. "If you want to see the ice sheet, we can arrange it. I think that's something everyone should get a chance to do."

Danielle paused, her hand on a coat she'd been taking off the hanger. "Really? That sounds like fun."

"We'll need to get you some boots, too," Aunt Jessica said. And some heavy woolens. I hope you don't find wool too scratchy."

"I can put up with it for a while," Danielle said. "At least I'm not like one girl I know. Cherry, a girl I met at school, has problems with cashmere.

"Really? That's a shame."

"Isn't it?" Danielle put back one coat and pulled out a different one that was the same shade as her hair. "What do you think of this one?"

Two days later Aunt Jessica had a piece of paper in her hands. ""This is where we're going." She put the paper on Danielle's desk. "We'll have to wait until it's school break."

"That's in two weeks."

Aunt Jessica nodded. "We can't go to the one north of Center because of the weather, but there's a place that does tours this time of year."

"Is it close? Does it take long to get there?"

"Actually that doesn't matter too much, not with the gates. Twenty minutes to get to the Gate Building, ten minutes to get to Center, and ten minutes to get to where we're going. We'll be on the other side of the country in less than an hour."

Danni considered that. Clear across the country in less than an hour, and most of it was taken up with getting to the Gate Building. That was another thing she liked about this here. And that also meant no government officials doing screening, or going through her things.

She did have a paper to finish, but she was beginning to get the hang of how to write one. She'd already outlined the paper, and now it was just putting in the words. It took a few minutes to to finish the paper, and then she looked at her math book.

She was a little tired of math. She knew she should study, but she wanted a little downtime for herself. She took a fresh piece of paper and picked up her pen.



"Dear Kendra,

"Well, winter is here, and while it's raining at the moment, I had to do some shopping for some true winter wear. That meant boots, real ones, not the fashionable ones we saw in the stores, and a really heavy jacket. We're going to have snow. That happens in the mountains, and everyone here is looking forward to it. Except my cousin's boyfriend. I expect he has to shovel the sidewalk or something.

"School continues to be a grind. I should be studying for a math test, but I'm about studied out at the moment. I spent two hours after school doing math problems, and I'll probably do a few practice ones when I get up in the morning. I don't like math, but I can see how useful it is.

"I got a job in a restaurant, waitressing and general kitchen help. That means I slice and chop until it starts to get busy, and then I'm out on the floor taking orders and delivering food. It's a job, but I think I agree with a girl I knew at school: I'm not going to get a job in the food industry.

"So what's happening with everyone? I checked the news, but ... nothing. How are you doing? Things being what they were with some people, I'm not sure I'll hear good news, or bad. But that aside, how are you doing? Still going to be Pre-Med? Are there other classes you might have time for? You know, for fun?

"Anyway, hope you're well. Give me a shout out, and let me know how things are.



"Your friend, 

"Danni"

She sighed and put the letter to one side. Math. Ugh. Studying it was a necessity, sort of like brushing her teeth. She couldn't think of anything more to say to Kendra.

She reached for the book Fiona had loaned her. She wanted to do well on the test, if for no other reason than to prove to people that she could. She stared at the page, but thought of her letter. There was no one back home she could tell the truth to, even her mother, at least by letter. There were people who would ruin what was here if they got half a chance, and they'd say they meant well while doing it. If it meant writing a vague letter full of half-truths to a friend to keep that from happening, she would do it. She'd never thought of herself as being an activist or something, but she guessed she was.

Dr. Wayland stopped at the school late the next day. She didn't pull Danielle off to an office or anything. Instead she picked a spot in the cafeteria. "Got something for you." She put a copy of the San Francisco Examiner on the table. "I thought you might be interested in the article in Section B."

Danielle dutifully opened the section, paging through it carefully. One headline caught her eye. "After School Sex Orgy".

"Acting on a tip, Tiburon police, assisted by the California Highway Patrol, raided the home of Dr. Arnold Cleburne yesterday. Upon entering the backyard they found..."

Danielle read the article, and then looked up. "Does this mean what I think it means?"

"The police found a sex orgy going on," Dr. Wayland said. "Everyone is facing a variety of charges. I'm told that the Talk Radio shows are full of comments, and the television coverage..." She kind of smiled. "It's quite a sensation."

"I'd think it would be on the front page of the paper."

"That's an editorial decision someone made. You don't seem that surprised."

"Sooner or later something was bound to happen," Danielle said. Enough girls were getting pregnant that sooner or later someone would notice."

"But I thought that sort of thing was hidden by some law."

Danielle nodded. "It is. It's called Hip-it or something, but I could get a ... my procedure done, and the doctor couldn't tell my parents. The insurance company wasn't allowed to say anything, either."

She reread a couple of paragraphs. "I bet I know what happened."

"Oh?"

"Someone finally stood up to the girls who organized this sort of thing. I almost did a couple of times, but..."

"But they were your friends."

Danielle nodded.

"When you see something wrong, you should report it. Too many things remain hidden because people don't want to get involved, or because they're friends, or something."

Danielle reread the story. "This says Child Protective Services is involved. Now."

Dr. Wayland nodded. "That's the law, I'm told."

"That means Mr. and Mrs. Cleburne will probably go to jail. CPS always blames the parents, but they weren't involved."

"Are you sure?"

"I was there. I know. Brittany and I were good friends, she's their daughter, and they were about as un-involved as parents can get. They gave Brittany money to buy groceries, but they were always traveling on business or something."

"I think most of the parents will be in trouble," Dr. Wayland said. "Your parents won't, of course, because you weren't there."

Something occurred to her, and Danielle smiled. "Several of the parents were my Dad's biggest campaign contributors. That means he might not get re-elected. Do you think he'd move here?"

"Only if he retires. A lot of politicians, when they lose an election, try the next time, or run for some other office."

"Oh." She sighed. "I was hoping they would. I like Aunt Jessica and Uncle Jack, but I really miss Mom and Dad."

Dr. Wayland folded up the newspaper. "We can only see what happens."

"Do you think my dad would like it here?"

Dr. Wayland shrugged. "It's hard to tell. It takes some time to adapt. You've done pretty well, though I bet there are things you still find, well, grating."

Danielle nodded absently. "Not so many. After a while you get used to somethings."

"All right. Other than that, have you given much thought to your future?"

"Checking up on me?"

"Well, it's part of my job, but not so much. Now I'm just curious."

"Well," Danielle said slowly, "I think my career as a chef is over. Working in a restaurant is okay, but not something I want to do the rest of my life."

"And so that leaves... ?"

"I don't know. Maybe what Aunt Jessica does. I find that interesting."

"History isn't what you thought it was, was it?"

Danielle shook her head. "No, it's not. I thought the school was giving me a load of, well, you know, but we got to see what was really going on. My teachers back in Tiburon were wrong."

"They were suggesting one viewpoint."

"They were teaching us everything bad about the US, and made the people who we fought in World War 2 into saints, when they were anything but. There were all sorts of things that were wrong, but the other side was so much worse."

"Anything in particular stand out?"

"What the Germans did to the Jews and the Russian civilians. Of course what the Russians did to their own people was pretty bad. And the Japanese..." She shook her head again. "How could the teachers be so blind to that?"

"Because they'd been taught that the U.S. was bad. There was something I was taught in school: when you start with a conclusion, you can twist any facts you have to support it.

"Anyway, I've taken up enough of your time today. I thought I'd let you know what was going on in Tiburon." She got up, and Danielle accompanied her to the door.

"I'm not going to be around as much," Dr. Wayland said. "But if there's anything you want to talk about, give me a call."

Danielle thanked her. She wished she could have seen the looks on the faces of some of the girls, especially a couple of them, when the police burst in. She wondered who'd blown the whistle. She'd have to wait a few days, and then write Kendra and see if she knew. Whoever it was had done everyone a big favor, though there were kids who wouldn't see it that way. To them she'd be a rat.

Too many bad things happened because people didn't do anything, she realized. She was just as guilty of that as anyone. She'd gotten out, thanks to her mother and Aunt Jessica. If she'd still been in Tiburon, she would probably have been at that party. That could have been her.

She stopped when she realized it meant her father's political career would have been over. But would they have moved here? Maybe not, even if her mother was from here.

She looked out the window. The rain had stopped, though the streets were still wet. In some ways this was still an alien place, but had gotten accustomed to it. In some ways she would miss it if she had to move back to the Bay Area. It was like this was how life was supposed to be, and what she'd grown up was a horrible mistake.



-------

Chapter 14





Dear Dani,

I suppose you've heard by now. How could you not? I logged on to the LA Times website last night, and they had the story. Nothing sells like sex, I guess, and teenagers in an orgy ... The final toll is 16 kids arrested and placed in foster care. Three of the girls are pregnant, Suzette, Tammy, and Kylie. Yeah, Kylie, who was behind so much of it, this is her third baby, and from what I understand, the court is going to make her have it. I find that ironic. Actions have consequences.

The word got all over school, about like you'd expect. All of a sudden those things nobody dared say are coming out. The police and newspapers are getting an earful. And I understand the police and CPS made a video as they entered that backyard. It's out on the internet right now. You probably have dial-up, and it's a fairly big file, so you may not be able to view it. Of course it is child pornography under the law, so the cops are trying to find who loaded it. Good luck, it's probably on a million servers.

Tanya McDonald, you probably remember her though she was in a different group of people than the one you ran in, she's been following this rather closely. She's the new editor of the school paper, and she wants to cover the story like the big papers, but the school administration has told her she can't. Tanya produced a bootleg copy of the paper, and was smart enough to cover her tracks. The principal is beside himself trying to find where the paper came from.

Tanya almost outed herself by giving a speech on censorship through spiking in Speech class. Spiking is when a paper just refuses to cover a story, kills it so to speak, in hopes that it will go away. I think the idea is that a story is only real if the papers cover it or something.

Anyway, Tanya called in a lot of favors, and she's pretty much scooped everybody. She has names, she has times of the parties, and unlike the Examiner and the others, she insists this was done without the parents knowing. She was the one, by the way, who found out who was pregnant. That's supposed to be private information, but if a girl tells another girl ... Tanya printed that as "speculation" and "rumor".

Okay, aside from the big story, I just got your letter. You're probably lucky to be in that small town. I've never lived in one, but a couple of my friends have, and they say parents keep a closer eye on kids there than they do in Tiburon. Don't know if that's true or not, but I'd like to think that it is. I sort of wish we still had something like that. But some of the parents here in Tiburon treat their kids as sort of mini-adults with all of the knowledge and responsibilities, and yes, maturity, of adults. And they can't let kids be kids. We both know of parents getting over-protective about their kids.

Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with us, and couldn't we go back to when things were simpler?

Can't wish for the past, though. It's in the past.

With all of the excitement going on here, almost everybody forgot about the SATs. That was last weekend. Okay, I didn't get double-800s. My combine score was 1590. I got a congratulatory letter from UCLA Admissions. Now I just have to live up to it.

Anyway, I hope you're well. I'm glad you're not here, I think you would have ended up in that whole mess. Your parents were a lot more perceptive than people know. There were a number of kids who bad-mouthed you after you left, but now the laugh's on the other side of their faces: their in foster homes and their names are available for those who check (despite the "official" policy of not releasing a kid's name).

Anyway, write and tell me what you think. You were involved with that crowd for a bit, and you probably have a unique perspective. And tell me what your college plans are? Are you going to go to one of the UC campuses? And what would you major in?

Your friend,

Kendra.



Danielle put down the letter, feeling a little mixed-up about the whole thing. Those had been her friends, but there were times she really hadn't liked them very much. There were times she felt that she'd been forced into that whole mess. Certainly she hadn't gotten much enjoyment out of those parties.

She kind of laughed at that. There were all of those magazines that insisted a girl got un-ending pleasure out of sex. There were some things she liked about doing it—mainly the kissing—but there were parts of it that seemed downright boring. You were supposed to enjoy yourself, but she hadn't. Of course that had been sex wtithout love. It was probably different when you actually had affection for the boy.

She drew a breath and put that out of her mind. Her aunt had left her a series of pamphlets, each one about a different time in history. That was probably from Dr. Wayland talking to her. She'd leafed through them, kind of bemused at what she was seeing. She realized she didn't know enough to really form an opinion. In the end she tried to picture herself wearing the clothes, sort of like that woman she had video-chatted with who was in a Renaissance city. Hoops and bustles were out, that eliminated the late 19th Century. And there was no way she could picture herself done up like a mummy, which ruled out the whole Middle Ages. Besides, she suspected that life in the Middle Ages was messy and short.

The Classical period sounded interesting. She could sort of picture herself in the clothes worn in Roman times. Greek? Maybe, but from what she'd read, Greek women were pretty confined to the home. Earlier? She really didn't know, though there was one picture of a woman wearing little more than a breechcloth. She definitely ruled out going topless, or even bare to any large extent.

She picked up the pamphlet that covered from 1600 to about 1850. They had some pretty clothes, so there was that going for them. Right now it looked as if the things that interested her were either that period, or the 20th Century, and there was a note that the Security Commission had a real issue with people exploring the ins and outs of some of the world after World War 1. Apparently there were a lot of secret police around, and they were very good at breaking people and getting secrets.

Of course to get to study this she'd have to get better grades. She wondered if there was a place for someone on these study teams that didn't require a college education. She'd have to check.

She had a more immediate concern that a college education, a math test first thing in the morning. She opened her math book and looked at the problems. The teacher had assigned only the odd-numbered ones, so she began working on the even-numbered ones.

AT lunch the next day she showed Fiona her test paper.

"An 89," Fiona said. "That's much better than your first test. That was a..."

"65," Danielle daid. She felt ridiculously pleased with the test... "Just one more point and I would have had an A0. That's got to be the best I've done on a math test since ... since I was in grade school."

"Feels good, doesn't it."

Danielle smiled at the paper. "I suppose I should see what I did wrong with the ones I missed."

Fiona nodded. "That's how you learn."

Danielle spent the rest of the day in a warm glow. She had accomplished that. And the test had been hard, not a make-work test like she'd seen in Tiburon.

Some of that was still with her when she settled in Enlish the next day. There was a new girl there, and the teacher introduced her.

"This is Cathy Wilson. She just moved here from a town next to the ice sheet."

There were only three girls in the class, not counting Cathy, so Danielle decided she had to introduce herself. Cathy was of medium heightand a little chunky. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her brown dress was belted at the middle with a matching belt.

" ... it was cold all of the time. Summer meant it was just less cold."

"So your parents moved here?" Robin asked. "We're about as far from a glacier as you can get."

"Actually no," Cathy said. "There's a glacier at the head of the valley. Dad's here to study it."

"How do you study a glacier?" Danielle asked. "They're big, they're full of ice, and they're cold."

Cathy shrugged. "I dunno. He does, that's all I know."

"How long are you here?" Robin asked.

"Until graduation I think," Cathy said. "Glaciers take a while to study. Mom said they thought of finding a house up near where the study team is going to be, but Dad insisted we live some place civilized." She smiled. "I was the only girl in school where we used to live, but that doesn't mean much, there were only six of us in school spread over six grades."

"What was..." Robin looked at the clock. "Oh Jeeze, we've got to get to class."

They hurried to the next one. In P.E. Cathy looked troubled.

"Problems?" Danielle asked.

"How can you wear a dress?" Cathy asked. "I felt like I was half-naked.

"It's what a girl wears," Danielle said. She looked around. "Though to tell the truth, I prefer my jeans"

"Jeans are good."

"You don't like dresses and skirts?"

"Never wore them until we moved here. You don't wear a dress near the ice sheet, you'll freeze solid in just a few minutes."

"I used to live where I'd wear a skirt maybe once a week," Danielle said, "if that."

Cathy sighed. "I just feel like the dress is going to fly up and show everything."

If you wear a tight enough one, it won't. And even if you fall down, people can't see up your skirt."

"Really?"

"It's like trying to see up a pair of jeans. Nothing's visible."

"What about tights? I used to wear them under my jeans."

"Those'll work, too."

Cathy looked thoughtful. "I'll have to try that. At least I'll feel dressed."

"They wear dresses or skirts all of the time here," Danielle said. "They can be a lot cooler to wear in the summer."

Cathy nodded. "Like I said, I'll have to try that. Now what are we doing in gym?"

"Probably swimming. We do that at least three times a week, usually on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.""

"Okay, swimming I'm used to. The pool was heated, and people would come back from the sheet and dive in the pool to warm up."

"I hope you brought your suit."

Cathy took it out of her locker. "Right here." It was a solid dark red with a diagonal yellow stripe, much like Danielle's except for color.

"The other two days we do a bunch of running around. Last week they actually had us on exercise machines, but that was because it was raining so much outside."

"Yeah, but it's a warm rain, not the one mixed with snow that I've seen where we used to live."

Sure enough, they did swimming, but they got to try their hands at water polo. Danielle remembered being fascinated by it in the Olympics, all of those shots underwater of strong legs kicking and so on. This seemed fun, and it was header than it looked. First, you actually had to stay afloat, then you had to worry about the ball. She was tired when she finally dragged herself back to the locker room. In a way, that was good. That was one of the things she remembered with pleasure from Tiburon. The gym teacher thought sweating was good for a girl, and didn't hesitate to make sure everyone had the opportunity to sweat. And there was something particularly soothing and restful about taking a shower after it was over.

Over the next few days she, Fiona, Robin, and Cathy began to hang together whenever they weren't in class. Fiona even invited Cathy over to her place. Cathy was nonplused when Fiona took off her dress and hung it up, revealing nothing but pink skin underneath.

"Aren't you afraid of ... Don't you..." Cathy flushed bright red.

"Oh, this?" Fiona gestured at her naked body. "I'm from Seaside, and this is normal. I guess I should have warned you."

"She doesn't think about it," Danielle said. "And don't worry, it's only us girls here. There isn't a boy around."

Cathy seemed a little easier, but it was clear she was bothered by Fiona's casual nudity. The next day she drew Danielle to one side and asked her about it.

"That's just Fi," Danielle said. "I was bothered by it when I first went there, and I still am, a little. But I figure, different strokes for different folks."

"Huh. That's catchy." She stared at the floor, the tips of her ears pink. "Yeah, but I kind of see it."

Danielle shrugged. "It's who she is. Now if you want a hard problem, one that Robin and I have both given up on, try convincing her to wear underwear."

"You mean she doesn't?"

"Robin got her to wear panties, but that's about it."

"But how can she... ?"

"She says a bra is too binding."

"She's probably wearing the wrong size."

"I've tried telling her that, but to no avail. She doesn't see the point of wearing one."

"Well..." Cathy kind of moved her head back and forth. "If you really get right down to it, she doesn't have as much to support as you or me. There's that."

"Yeah, I'd noticed. You should have seen the gym teacher trying to get her to wear a bathing suit."

Cathy burst out laughing. "No, really? Yeah, I guess so. If you're naked all of the time, you probably wouldn't think about wearing one."

Danielle decided not to tell Fiona or Cathy about the community pools. From what she'd gathered, they were unique to Three Valleys and, of course, Seaside. She really didn't expect people who went naked all of the time to put on a swimsuit to go jump in a pool.

That afternoon Danielle's history teacher asked her to write a paper on "comparative cultures", and have it done in two days. At first Danielle didn't see how she could do anything, but then it hit her: Fiona and Cathy were from two completely different cultures. Or if they weren't, it sure appeared to be the case. So she compared the culture that developed near the ice sheet with the ones that were common where it was warm and sunny all of the time.

The teacher did ask her, on Friday, to explain a point. "It's warm and sunny most of the time here, so doesn't that invalidate part of your thesis?"

"Perhaps I should add that in Seaside they choose to go naked."

The teacher nodded. "Or perhaps you could say that the climate in Seaside gives them the choice to go naked."

"That would be even better,." Danielle reworked it at lunch, and turned it in again before going home.

On Monday the teacher gave it back with an A-. "Pretty good, overall. I think you could benefit with drawing a few more conclusions, but overall I like how you did this."

Aunt Jessica was proud for her, and Danielle liked it so much she had to include some of it in a letter to Kendra, half of which she promptly scrapped when she decided she was telling too much. And then she rewrote it again, partly because she knew she could write the letter even better than she had.



Dear Kendra,

Life here has settled down to one storm after another. Due to some geological freak or something, we get rain, not snow. Apparently that happens in this part of the country. But if you want snow, you only have to go a few miles and you can have all of it that you want.

We have two girls in school who come from different places. Cathy is from some place way up north where its cold all of the time. While everyone else is going around all bundled up, she's practically in a light jacket. She says this is nothing compared to where she'd been. For one thing, no huge drifts of snow!

Fiona, on the other hand, is one of those nudists we've all heard about. She can't wait for summer when she can strip down to the buff. Oh, not in public of course. I suspect she lays out in her backyard or something. Apparently we live not that far from a nudist place. I'm not sure how I'd handle that.

Other than that, school is ... school. My grades are improving, and not because the teachers have decided that nobody gets a C or below (they've actually flunked some kids!), but because I'm having to study a lot. And it's kind of fun, too. I'm still not sure what I'd take in college, but now I'm actually looking forward to the idea.

One thing I don't do as much of as I did in Tiburon is date. There's this one boy I've gone to a dance with, and a couple of other things, but certainly not like back in the Bay Area. Still, he's pretty nice, and...





-------

Chapter 15



Apparently the middle two years of high school were for exploration. Danielle found that out when her class was told it was time for a field trip.

"What is this?" she asked her cousin when she got home.

"Oh, that. I'm surprised you haven't had one yet. The school takes you on a field trip and you get to see some of the things you could do after school."

"Oh. Like college?"

"Not so much that. College means a lot more studying. No, this takes you to places outside of the immediate area." She took the paper and studied it. "Ah, you're going to Westport."

"Westport? Where's that?"

"On the west coast way up north of here. We went there a couple of months ago. There's a lot of stuff to see, and if you get at all interested in doing stuff with the sea, that's where you'd go."

"What about if I don't want to?"

"Oh, you're supposed to go, it's just a day out of regular classes, that's all. The school sort of has a policy of showing you these things, but you don't have to go any farther than that. Leading a horse to water and all that."

Danielle mulled that over in silence. "Where else do you go?"

"Well, last week we went to Center, that was fun. They showed us the legislature, and the police, and a couple of other things. We drove past the University, but that was all. Next week we're going to some place over the mountains. I don't know what's there, but it should be interesting."

Danielle could sort of see the logic in all of it. And if nothing else, they got out of a day of regular class.

"I'm surprised they can get it all done in one day." She remembered a trip to Sacramento that had taken two days.

"They use the gates, so you get there in a heartbeat. Have fun. I know I'll never do anything at sea, but it was interesting to see. It's very likely you'll never get back to some of these places, so you should keep that in mind, too."

Put that way, she began to look forward to the trip. And that meant dressing warmly on the actual day.

Fiona, of course, didn't want to dress warmly. She thought she was over-dressed anyway, but Danielle put her foot down.

"I know what it's like to be some place cold. Look, you don't have to wear them, but bring along some tights, and you'll probably need a jacket and a sweater."

"I don't have a sweater or tights."

Danielle smiled. "Shopping trip!"

"Do we have to?"

"Do you want to freeze?"

"It can't be that bad."

"It probably isn't, but why take the chance. The teacher's been there, and she says dress warmly. I'd believe her if I were you."

Taking Fiona shopping for clothes was like walking through mud: one painful step at a time. The girl had no sense of style or fit, and Danielle found herself giving her friend a crash course in the subject in the middle of the store.

"Look, Fi, I know this. You're good at math, way better than me. I'm way more experienced at this sort of thing than you are, and besides, I find it fun."

"You should probably go into clothes design or something," Fiona muttered.

"Maybe I will. In the meantime, you'll need at least two pairs of tights."

"Why do they call it a pair if there's only one garment?"

"Tradition. Now what were you planning on wearing tomorrow?"

"Whatever is at the front of my closet."

"Oh-kay. Look, wear your red dress. It's about the shade of these tights. Now you could also do white, that goes with most anything, and there's also black, though I think white is more universal..."

The sweater was even harder. Fiona still didn't like wearing a bra, and that meant she really didn't display many curves, at least when she was dressed. Fortunately a sweater was forgiving. Danielle decided dressing her friend in a tight sweater would totally escape the whole point of showing off. Instead she went for bulky and warm.

"Does it have to be so big?" Fiona asked.

"What, you want something that flatters your figure?"

"Of course not. But this seems awfully big."

"let me explain the theory here," Danielle said. "All of this bulk traps air next to your skin. That keeps it the same temperature as your body. That keeps you warmer."

"Oh. I didn't realize that."

"See, some clothes are worn because there's a purpose behind it other than simply covering you."

Fiona nodded, her eyes wide. "I should probably get more than one in case one gets dirty."

"Good idea," Danielle said, nodding.

Fiona went through the racks of sweaters carefully, and actually paid some attention to fit and color. In the end she got three sweaters, one red, one white, and one green. All three went well with her hair and complexion, and all three fit pretty well.

"Congratulations," Danielle said as they walked home. "You have just successfully gone clothes shopping."

"They make sense in some cases," Fiona admitted. "It's not like I'll wear them very often, but it's nice to have them just in case."

Danielle smiled. She felt it was a victory, and decided not to spoil it with even the tiniest hint of a gloat.

"Tell you what. We should do some shoe shopping. I don't know about you, but my feet can get so cold, and if the shoes don't fit my feet are in agony."

"Yeah, sandals don't strike me as very comfortable if it's cold out."

In the end they needed the extra layers. It was a blustery day in Westport. Danielle had thought it would be where San Francisco was on the other side of the gates, and there was a town there, but Westport was farther south, about where Ventura was. She'd found it on the map, and asked about Los Angeles and San Diego.

"The northern one, what you call Los Angeles, doesn't have a harbor. That other place does, but it isn't very big. Westport has a river right there, and ships can anchor there out of the bulk of the weather.

"What about farther north?" She put her finger on where San Francisco Bay was. "That looks good.

"They get ice choked from time to time, and the weather sweeps down that valley and makes a mess of things. You don't want to be that close to the ice sheet."

She'd never thought of the Central Valley of California as being effected by the ice sheet, but when she looked at a second map, it was. She'd thought the glaciers had stopped well to the north, but apparently not.

"It doesn't look like there are too many glaciers in the area."

"There aren't, but there's a lot of volcanic activity. That keeps the glaciers at bay. But an independent glacier grew down the valley there. That makes a mess of things."

Danielle remembered something about Mt. Lassen, but other volcanoes? She sort of remembered Mt. St. Helens, and weren't there supposed to be other volcanoes in the area? She couldn't remember; she'd never paid that much attention to geography.

Westport was in a big open area with some hills to the north and east. The town itself was tucked up against those hills, right where the river cut a channel, and stretched for several miles. From what she'd read, the area grew a lot of crops, but mostly grazed horses. Apparently there weren't that many crops that did so well in a very changeable climate. There were some islands to the south, what she'd seen on a map as the Channel Islands. They protected against a lot of the weather, and helped make this a pretty good anchorage for shpping.

The ships themselves anchored along the river at various docks. Danielle remembered seeing the docks in San Francisco, and how they seemed concentrated at one part of town. These docks stretched one every few hundred yards, with fishing boats at the fartheset end, and cranes and other things everywhere. It gave a very busy feel to the whole place.

It was raining and blowing. Curiously enough, it wasn't as bad as she'd thought, though the other kids seemed to huddle together in the lee of the building.

Cathy had worn her jeans and other heavy clothes, and she stood out in the wind looking around. "This isn't bad," she said when someone asked her. "I've seen much worse. What's it like during the summer?"

"A lot warmer," the teacher said. "We're just unlucky enough to be here during a storm."

"I thought we'd see icebergs or something," Robin said.

Cathy shook her head. "There's some big current that sweeps north along the coast. It keeps the icebergs away. It makes this area rainier than you'd think, but it's also warmer."

"Here's the bus," the teacher said. "The next stop is the aquarium."

Danielle was glad to get back to Terminus. The sun was shining and while it wasn't exactly warm, it wasn't cold either. Only Fiona looked cold.

Curiosity made her wonder why San Francisco Bay wasn't a port. It looked like such a natural one, and if the ice bergs were kept away by the current, it should be useful all year round. Well, if there was one thing she'd learned in school, it was how to research something.

The answer wasn't that obvious, not until she'd looked at the daily temperatures and climate data. She surprised herself; she knew how to do that, and how to draw conclusions from what she was seeing. She didn't think she ever would have been able to do that in Tiburon. Instead they would have had the ready-made answer. Given what she knew, she wasn't sure she would have trusted that answer. She had teachers, she realized that now, who were proponents of one way of looking at the world, and didn't want students to draw the conclusions themselves. It didn't matter if that view was right or wrong, they didn't want students to really think about things, only the minor things.

First, the northern part of the Central Valley in California had a glacier in it. It extended north to Mt. Lassen, and stopped right about where the northern limits of the river delta on the north side of San Francisco Bay existed. That made for a lot of bad weather. That was because the southern extension of the Central Valley got a lot of heat and sunshine, and the two air masses were constantly colliding. She could see that in the day-to-day temperatures, winds, and rainfall.

There was a railroad in the area, and it crossed well to the south. The only really good port in the area was either farther south in what she thought of as Mexico, or in Westport, where she'd just been. The mountains protected the town from the worst of the weather, and the only really bad weather they got was that that came in off the sea.

The other places were like Aunt Jessica had said: not really a port in this world. The only exception seemed to be Ensenada on the Mexican coast, but that wasn't much of a port, just a fishing village. They were building a railroad there, and there were plenty of places for people to grow crops farther inland. Apparently the weather was much better there than it was in her real world.

Was it really 'her world'? In a way, yes. But she was feeling more and more comfortable here. She had friends here, she only had one friend back in Tiburon. And boys? Not back there. Sure there were boys, but not like she was finding here. For one thing, not a boy here had hit on her. Back in Tiburon they all did, or at least it seemed like it, and she was expected to put out, too. There had to be that sort of thing going on here, but she wasn't seeing it. Oh, her cousin went to bed with her boyfriend, but that seemed to be all. And Jenny was truly smitten with her boyfriend. She somehow suspected that if Aunt Jessica hadn't approved, Jenny and her boyfriend would never have had sex. As it was, she was now joining them every Sunday for church, and moping around the house when he was on a field trip.

She was beginning to feel all sorts of reasons why living in Valley's End was better for her than living in Tiburon. She wondered if that just reflected her getting accustomed to this place, or something more profound. Certainly there were a lot of things she didn't even think about, things that were almost designed to make kids feel safe. And there wasn't tht streak of constant rebellion that she remembered from Tiburon, and the trying of things because it was forbidden. Here kids listened to their parents.

Oh, there were kids who got in trouble, but compared to what she'd seen around her when she was growing up, it was all minor things. Boys still got into fights, though they didn't bring a gun to school, and now and then she'd heard a report of a kid who got into trouble for stealing a candy bar, but that was it. Certainly no kids getting pregnant or doing drugs. It might be Ozzie and Harriet, but in a good way, not the way she thought it would be.

She wondered if Fiona was right, and she should try her hand at making or designing clothes. After thinking about it, she checked. Her aunt had a sewing machine, and so did the school. The latter surprised her, until she realized that in the best 1950s tradition girls here were probably taught how to sew in school.

"No, I learned from my mother," Robin said. "I've heard rumors that some schools teach sewing, but I think it's mostly what you pick up to do some casual repairs and stuff like that."

Danielle looked at the pamphelts she'd picked up. What would it take to sew garments like she saw in these pictures? First, there was a lot of fabric and it would require a lot of stitching. Second, back then this was the only way people had clothes. Women did a lot of the cooking, and most of the clothes-making. Just how they did that, and found time to do all of the other things that needed to be done, was a mystery.

Is this what I want to do? She asked herself. Finding out the day to day details of how people lived? Well, she was always interested in that sort of thing when she was back in Tiburon, so why not now? Certainly people had been getting by for several thousands of years, but how much was known about how the average person lived? Probably it wasn't as much as people thought. And by people she meant the everyday people, not the rich with tons of servants.

She didn't think this was sociology. It might be anthropology, but she wasn't sure. It was history, of a sort. And how did the way they live affect the way they viewed the world? That had to be an important question. There were probably people who were researching it, butshe hadn't seen anything in Aunt Jessica's library. Of cours there might already be stuff like that at the University library.

She went downstairs and got on the computer in the study. They had something like the internet here, but it was a bit more limited. Still, she should be able to find something. She hoped so, this was sounding more and more interesting.



-------

Chapter 16


"I think you're in a unique position," Dr. Wayland said. She tilted her head and looked at Danielle. "Other people have studied how the ordinary person lives, but you're the first one who's wanted to do so in a multi-faceted way."

"Multi-faceted? Danielle asked. "What do you mean?"

It was a week after the trip to Westport, and Danielle had been struck by two things: the amount of seafood that was in the restaurants, there wasn't nearly as much as she'd expected for a fishing port, and how the clothes she saw were completely different. Women wore skirts and dresses, but not if their jobs took them outside during bad weather. There'd been a lot of jeans and slacks in sight when they were outside. The dresses only appeared when people were inside, and then tights were common.

"We have good books about diet, and more about chores, but usually they focus on a peasant's life. You're after the city and town dweller. That's different. And you're after other things as well: clothing and food combined. Plus other things. I'm not sure very many people have put those together."

"You mean... ?"

"I would suggest you pick one place and time that we have a lot of information about and work there, first, and then expand your study after you've developed some methodologies and parameters."

"So it is a good idea."

"Quite good, dear, and one that I'm sure will keep you busy for a long time."

Danielle felt some relief. It had seemed such an obvious field of study, and she was surprised that nobody had already done it.

"That's because people focus on what they think are the big items, like the way the nobility lives." Dr. Wayland grinned. "Frankly, I think that's because they secretly wish that they were the nobility."

"I had noticed how many people claim they were a famous person in a previous life."

"Somebody I went to school with has suggested that maybe they were that person, but in an alternate timeline." Dr. Wayland shrugged slightly. "I won't say one way or the other, but it might explain why so many people think they were Cleopatra or someone like that."

Danielle dismissed that. She'd never been a big believer in "past lives". "So you think this would be a legitimate research path?"

"I think it would fly," Dr. Wayland said. "And if it doesn't pan out completely, say you don't get the grades you needed to become a researcher, there are other things that you could be doing that would give you a lot of what you're after. Before I went into medicine I worked as a support for a study team. The best paper to come out of it was from a young man who was looking at how they did basic carpentry work. He wasn't on the actual team, but was a general maintenance man who collected a lot of reports, videos, pictures and so on. He stole a bit of time here and there, and produced some really good stuff."

"And the researchers didn't mind it?"

"It didn't affect his duties, so they didn't have a problem. For example, one of his requests was that someone just take a picture of a carpentry shop. That told him the tools that were available, and what could be done with them. As I recall, the meat of his study came when he replicated a carpentry shop and had a woodworker he knew see what he could do. Then he looked at furniture and sort of deconstructed how it was built."

"So... ?"

"Let's see what you need to study to get into a position where you could do this."

Danielle left the interview with Dr. Wayland feeling good about her future. She looked at the brochures again. There was no way she wanted to do something Victorian. She'd heard too many stories about Victorian times. But doing something at the start of the Industrial Revolution, say Colonial America, or its equivalent elsewhere ... She wondered how much was known about Spain's colonies. They had existed, so why not study them? She didn't mean the peasants, either, but the ones in the middle, below the upper nobility who had servants, and above the ones who had to struggle to scratch out a day-to-day existence.

"You look chipper," Aunt Jessica said when she got home.

"Dr. Wayland liked my idea of seeing how people in the middle lived," Danielle said. "Especially in the Spanish colonies, not just the English ones."

Aunt Jessica's eyebrows went up. "I don't think anyone ever thought about the Spanish colonies. You'll have to learn Spanish, and not the modern version."

"I realize that. I was looking at something at school. The Spanish had an official way of pronouncing things, a Royal Academy. The English never did. So if I learned the officially accepted way of speaking..."

"You'd probably have to learn the slang as well."

Danielle nodded. "And if I don't, I'm sure there are other things I could be doing for any study team that was in the area." She smiled softly. "The Spanish had a huge colonial empire, and that's got to help."

"I'm sure it does." She sighed. "There are a lot of things you'll have to learn, sewing, cooking, and so on."

"I know. Some of it I already do, but I think I'll have to learn the old-fashioned way, doing it by hand, not just with a sewing machine."

"Do you know how to use a sewing machine?"

"Not really."

"Then it's time you learned. I honestly thought you knew."

"They don't teach it in school in Tiburon, not even as an elective. It's considered sexist to have courses like that or cooking."

"I ... see." Her aunt shook her head. "I suppose there are a lot of things that women have traditionally been very good at that they don't teach."

"I wouldn't know."

"Follow me." Aunt Jessica led her down the hall to a little nook where she had her sewing machine. "We have plenty of time before dinner since you didn't have a tutoring session today, and we can get started with just how a sewing machine works, and what it is you do when operating it."

"Should I even bother to learn one of these?"

"If nothing else, you could get a job making the garments study teams would wear when they're in the field."

"Oh. Well, that makes sense."

They spent the next half hour with the sewing machine, and at the end of it Danielle didn't feel as lost as she had when she first saw it. It was a lot more complex, and yet a lot simpler, than she had thought. Sewing a seam wasn't as hard the third time she tried it, it just took a lot of concentration.

She went up to her room with a book of patterns. These were simple ones that produced things you used around the house, not complex clothes. In the back, though, were lots and lots of things on the different kinds of cloth. That was interesting. Different cloths could be combined like different foods, depending on what you were trying to do. Some cloth was better for one thing than another, and if you sewed the cloth into little pockets you could put stuff inside and make quilts. Since people had to rely upon fires for heat, not central furnaces, that was important. Besides, the different cloths could be used as decoration.

She finally, reluctantly, turned back to her homework. She needed to do this quite well in order to be able to do what she was really interested in. She was getting biter at the essay composition, and her math was better than average, but she needed to improve her other things, and that would take time.

It didn't help that Jenny's boyfriend was back from a week away and he and Jenny were getting acquainted, or maybe re-acquainted, in her room. She could hear the occasional low moan, but at least her cousin had moved the bed away from the wall so the rhythmic noise didn't disturb her.

Jenny hadn't said much about what she wanted to do. Maybe she wanted to be a housewife and a mother. She was certainly working on the latter. Guys, she'd and her friends in Tiburon had decided, expected their wives to be gourmet cooks, or be able to hire one, and to be acrobats in bed. Or if not acrobatic, act like they were enjoying themselves. She didn't think Jenny was putting on an act.

She put her cousin's sex life out of her mind. She'd been there, she'd done that, and now she was using the other end of her body, her mind. And that felt good.

Two days later Cathy showed up at school in a new dress. "I love the stores here," she said.

"Better than what you were used to?"

"Much better. A log of things we had to order out of catalogs, and then tailor after it arrived." She plucked at the waist. "And I didn't have to alter it at all."

Danielle didn't ask. If Cathy had lived in that small of a town, she wasn't surprised that her friend had had to do that. "The color of the dress suits you."

"Think so? I still feel a little uncomfortable wearing it."

"You'll get used to it. Back where I come from its common to wear jeans, and I'm used to skirts and dresses now."

Cathy nodded. "That's what my mother said." The rain had ceased, and the sun was trying to come out. "At least it isn't snowing."

"Most of the people here don't believe in snow."

Cathy smiled. "Snow isn't bad, blizzards are. Last year we were confined to our house for a week. Then they opened the tunnels, and we could get out."

"Tunnels? Underground?"

Cathy shook her head. "They dig tunnels beneath the snow. We're just a couple of miles from the ice sheet so we get a lot of snow. In Center they measure it in inches. Where we were you measured it in feet. They'd dig tunnels, and you could get out." She laughed briefly. "You had to."

"I couldn't imagine being confined to one place for that long."

"What we'd usually do is gather in the Community Center. Every family had a room there, but it was warm and you could get out and interact with people. To show you how deep the snow got, there was a door to the outside on the second floor."

"And here you can wear a light jacket year round."

"Seems strange." Fiona walked past, waving. "And then there's Fie. Robin told me she's a nudist."

"She's from Seaside," Danielle said. "I think we've told you about them."

"Is it true she doesn't wear any undies?"

"Yeah, and it can be a problem. She doesn't know how to be modest."

Cathy laughed. "She should try living where you have to be modest, or they find you frozen."

"Ever do anything like that?"

Cathy shook her head. "The closest I've come has been in the sauna. You're wearing a towel or robe, but that's it. Of course it's really hot in one, but after you've been outside, it feels really good. I miss that."

"I've heard that they have a sauna at the hotel downtown."

Cathy looked interested. "I could go for that."

"I could, too. You know, I don't have a tutoring session this afternoon. We could go today."

"We could. Sounds fun."

Robin joined them at the hotel pool. Danielle had looked at the public pool as they walked past it, but was glad they weren't going there. Fiona had praised the whole idea of being naked. She liked having that layer of cloth between her and the rest of the world. She wasn't terribly fond of her bathing suit, but it was much better than nothing.

Fiona laughed a little when she saw her for their tutoring session the next day. "I can't believe you have clothes just to wear when you're in the water. It's like nightgowns. I can't believe people thought that was a great thing. That's just one more thing you have to keep clean."

"I thought they were invented just to show off how rich people were," Danielle said. "As I understand it, people really went to bed in their underclothes, and it wasn't until the Dutch got really good at water-powered looms that nightgowns got to be common."

"Think so?" Fiona considered that. "I suppose you may be right. Personally—"

"I know," Danielle interrupted, "you can't see wearing them."

Fiona shrugged. "Well, at that time of the month, sure, but usually only on the first couple of days of my flow." She smiled sheepishly. "My mother made me wash the sheets one time, and I sort of saw the advantages of wearing something extra, just in case."

"Some of us are not cut out to go around nude."

"Whatever." She handed Danielle a sheet with word problems. All of them were related to cooking. "I know you don't like word problems, but I thought you might find this set interesting."

Danielle read through the first one. "I see an additional problem here."

"Oh?"

"It's asking for how to cut down the ingredients when making only 5/8ths of a batch of cookies."

"Yeah."

"But it doesn't say at all what kind of cookies. It's totally important!"

Fiona rolled her eyes before laughing. "I could make it ginger cookies, but I don't like those as much. How about ... chocolate chips? With two kinds of chips?"

"Add in macadamia nuts, and you might have something."

"Really? You like macadamia nuts in your cookies?"

Danielle looked at her friend. "You don't?"

"The bits get caught in my teeth and take forever to get out. Same with walnuts."

Danielle laughed. "I have a couple of friends back in ... well, let's just say I have some friends who are like so totally into eating nuts they'd put them in everything."

"Do they eat them just for pleasure without the extra food?"

"I know they're supposed to have all sorts of nutrients, but I think they eat them just for the crunch."

"I'm the same way about potato chips," Fiona said. She slapped her tummy lightly. "Unfortunately, they go right to my bottom so I have to watch it. I don't want to look like my Aunt Grace." She made a face. "She's no taller than me, but the both of us together don't weight as much as she does."

"Ugh. I'm not sure I'd like that."

"I certainly don't." She laughed again. "There were some people who moved to Seaside from some place back east, and they seemed to have these fantasies that everyone in town looked sleek and, well, you know. So someone asked Grace to help them with the transaction. I'm not sure guys would have many fantasies about her."

"Oh, I don't know," Danielle replied. "Guys get the strangest ideas. For all we know, there are some out there who would love that."

"Whatever."

Danielle looked at the list of problems. "Let's assume these are chocolate chip cookies. All right?"

"Only if we can make some afterward."

"Deal!"

Danielle knew she was a much better baker than Fiona. It was nice to know she was better at something than her friend. She was probably better at sewing, too, but only because Fiona didn't really understand clothing at all. She could see that. If she'd been raised like her friend, she wouldn't understand how a new dress could make you feel.

There was a note from Dr. Waverly waiting for her when she got home. It was a list of books she might want to read about how people lived. She checked. Her aunt had a couple of the books in the study. After dinner she opened one of them and started browsing.

"You are planning on going to bed tonight," Aunt Jessica asked.

Danielle looked up in surprise. "Well, yeah."

"Good, because it's nearly midnight."

Danielle blinked at the clock. Where had all of the time gone? She'd sat down after dinner, which had been around 7:00 pm. But now...

Danielle marked her place in the book. "I guess I'd better." She was halfway up the stairs when she realized she hadn't done any of her homework, either. She sighed. It was going to be a very late night.

The next day she felt half-asleep and fighting off a fatigue headache. She got a note from the school office asking her to call work. Wondering what it was all about, she called them during lunch.

"I have a note from your Aunt," Mrs. Guthrie said, "saying that you wanted to learn more about cooking than she can teach you."

"Well ... I'm sort of interest in that."

"We can teach you, it'll mean an extra night of work, but you'll have to do it in Upper & Lower."

"I won't have to ... um, you know, go naked will I?"

Mrs. Guthrie laughed softly. "Trust me dear, a grill is the last place you want bare any skin. No, you won't."

Danielle felt a flood of relief. "Good, 'cause I'm not really into that sort of thing."

"Not everybody is. What does your schedule look like?"

She told Mrs. Guthrie her school schedule. "All right, I would say Tuesday evening sounds like our best bet. I'll contact the school, and you can get out a little early, provided you come straight here."

Danielle mentioned it to Aunt Jessica when she saw her at dinner. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I talked with the school and Dr. Waverly only this morning," Aunt Jessica said. "I called where you work to see if it might be possible. I was going to ask you about it if they said yes, but they moved faster than I thought."

"I told them I would," Danielle said, "and I have to travel to Upper & Lower for the class."

"It isn't a class," Aunt Jessica said. "There were two ways to learn cooking aside from a parent or guardian. The first is to go to college, get a degree in food science, and then apprentice in a kitchen."

"And the second?"

"Apprentice in a kitchen. The only bad part of it is that you'll do the scullery work irst, and only gradually work up to doing the cooking. You'd be a better cook with some college glasses, but—"

"But they'll pay me to learn," Danielle said.

"No more than you're making now, but without the tips. Of course if you didn't work at the restaurant you'd have to do it for free."

Danielle shrugged. "I'll chance that."

Mrs. Guthrie was at the restaurant on Saturday and Sunday, and during lulls she had Danielle come back and demonstrate a few things to her. After showing how she cut things, Mrs. Guthrie sighed. "You'll have to get a lot faster than that, dear. You need to learn to make quick, even cuts. You want them even because if they are, they'll cook in the same amount of time."

"And quick so we can get the food out faster."

"Part of that is in the prep work, and that's what you'll learn to do, at least at first."

"Have to start somewhere."

"That's the attitude."

When Tuesday rolled around she couldn't wait. The school let her out 30 minutes early, and she made straight for the cable car. She felt a little nervous riding by herself. Normally she had friends along, or family. Instead she was all alone. She wondered if she would be heading back up. The streets would probably be empty, and that was never a good thing.

Mrs. Guthrie introduced her to Paul, a large man with quick hands, a few burn marks on his sleeves, and a gentle voice. "Everyone nicks themselves in the kitchen," he said when they were alone. "It's part of the training, I think. You learn how to use the knife, and that is a primary requirement. There's only one other that's that critical."

"Knowing how long to cook something?"

He shook his broad head. "No, that's not so important. It's measuring things by eye. Not the big things, such as cups of flour, but the small things such as a teaspoon, or even a fraction of one. We joke that a recipe doesn't turn out the same two days in a row because things are off by just a smidgen each night. But that's all right in the savory side of cooking. Baking is like chemistry and requires precise amounts of ingredients, as you'll learn."

He sent her home with a "homework assignment". She was to do all of the chopping of vegetables for her aunt. She was to write down what she was chopping, how much, and how long it took her.

By Friday she could chop celery and carrots fairly quickly, and she'd only cut herself once. She thought of it as quite an accomplishment.

"One down," she muttered to herself as she wrote down the times, "and about a million other things to learn."

Jenny came home, her cheeks flushed and her eyes alight. "Ah, we're having a lot of vegetables tonight."

"Not as much as you think," Danielle replied. "Some of these I'll have to take to work, but yeah, vegetables in the dinner tonight. Speaking of work, I asked Mrs. Guthrie about your working there. She has an opening for a waitress, if you're interested."

"Sure."

"There's a problem, though. The opening is in Upper & Lower. I don't know how you feel about being nude."

Jenny shrugged. "If I have to, I have to."

"I thought I'd check. I know I couldn't."

"Mom said you were working one night a week in Upper & Lower."

"In the kitchen. Believe me, you have as little bare skin as possible in the kitchen. Flying grease."

Jenny flinched. "Oh. I can see that."

Danielle handed her cousin a slip of paper. "This is Mrs. Guthrie's phone number. You can call her just about any time."

"I think I'll do it now," Jenny said." She headed for the study.



-------

Chapter 17




Dear Kendra

I've decided to study Cultural Anthropology. I've always been interested in history, but reading books all day and writing opinions about them never appealed to me. I've been talking with a neighbor of ours who was trying to figure out what everyday life was like in Ancient Greece. He had found a list of what was available in the marketplace, and I was able to tell him what could be done with it in the kitchen. Figuring out how people live, that's interesting. Of course I'll have to get my grades up. I think you were the only one who took school seriously. Personally, I suspect school had turned into a giant babysitting service. That probably wouldn't be too popular an opinion, but why else would so many colleges require junior college first? Anyway, that's just my opinion.

I heard about what happened in Tiburon, even here. It didn't get as many headline as local news, but what would you expect? I'm glad I'm out of it. I really wasn't that happy when I was involved, but when I look back at it, I sort of felt compelled to take part. I didn't like leaving, but now that I look back on it, this is a pretty good place to live. We don't have anywhere near the distractions we had in Tiburon. I've made some friends, and I can see some exciting and interesting things to do in the future that don't just involve being a trophy wife on somebody's arm.

The school here works things out so you get some practical hands-on experience in what you might want to do, sort of like you dissecting frogs in biology. In my case that means I'm learning how to cook, and not just what every girl learns, but how to cook for a lot of people. It's a bit exhausting, but kind of interesting, too. There's a lot more involved when you're feeding a bunch of people, not just one or two. I don't get college credit for it, but it'll mean I get to skip a bunch of courses that I'd have to take. Some kids might want the credits, though. Me, I'll be able to take other courses instead.

Do they actually have anything like that in becoming a doctor? I've always wondered that.

Oops, time to go. I wrote this on my break, and break time is over.

Write soon.

Your friend,

Danni



Danielle stuck the letter in her pack. She'd spent the early evening chopping vegetables and whacking patties of meat with a little hammer. Flattening the meat to a uniform thickness tenderized it, and also meant that it all cooked in the same amount of time.

So much of the prep work she was learning was designed to help the chef on the timing of cooking. It was the difference between serving a plate of hot food, and food that was lukewarm or even cold.

The other trick was in judging cooking times. Chef Paul was always poking at the food to see how done it was. Some foods, she'd learned, continued to cook after you took them from the stove. Chef Paul called it "letting the food rest", but it still had residual heat, and you had to learn how much more it would cook after you'd put it on the plate. That had been simpler than she'd thought; he stuck a thermometer into a piece of meat and she watched the temperature change. After seeing that done with a number of different types and cuts of meat, she'd begun to get the hang of it. A lot of cooking, she decided, was accumulated practical wisdom.

Jenny had never said whether she had gotten the job or not, so Danielle was a little surprised when she put an order up and Jenny come get it.

She tried not to look at her cousin, but it was hard to ignore her. The counter was high enough she was only visible from the neck up, which helped, but she'd seen her from behind a couple of times, and there was no doubt Jenny was naked. And she seemed as unconcerned about it as everyone else.

She asked her about it when they rode the cable car back up to Valley's End.

"That's the difference between us," Jenny said, "or at least one of them. People go nude here, at least in places like the pool and a few others, and always have. After a while it's no big deal. Oh, I'll try to take in as much as I can about some boy who's looking buff and so on, but I've seen it before.

"You, on the other hand, come from a place where nudity means sex, and people try to show off without really showing off. Someone like Fie can fit in here with only a few problems. I doubt if she could fit in back in Tiburon without a lot of problems."

"I ... You could be right, especially about Fiona," Danielle said. "Do you like going naked? When I go to her place for tutoring, the first thing she does is strip down. That was ... It took me a little while to get used to that, and sometimes I still have a problem."

"That's because where you came from it was "cover up, cover up, cover up". Fie doesn't flaunt her nudity. She isn't spreading her legs and pointing to it. Being nude is part of who she is, but she doesn't make a fetish of it."

Danielle nodded. Since reading two of the books in Aunt Jessica's library she had begun looking at things in a different way. Nudity was part of how Fiona defined herself. Other girls, like those back in Tiburon, did the same thing with clothes and friends, much like she had. Fie was more centered, but not in a bad way.

"The one trouble you'll run into," Aunt Jessica told her the next day as Danielle prepped some of dinner, "is that pretty soon you'll start looking at everything that way. That's both good and bad. The good part is that you'll be making your studies a part of you. The bad part is that sometimes you'll be too uninvolved with something because you'll be studying it rather than participating.

"How did you cope with it?"

"It took a while, but I Jack and didn't looking at it as a "courting ritual" and just enjoyed the emotional experience." She smiled softly. "I think that was one of the things I enjoued about him."

"I take it you're suggesting I should date more."

"Only if you want to, dear. I know some of your experiences in Tiburon, and I know how hard it must be for you."

"It's not something I felt comfortable with," Danielle said, "but I figure that sooner or later I'll be able to overcome that."

"Understandable. Well, if you need someone to talk to, I'm here."

Danielle gave her a half-smile. The trouble was that she didn't talk with her mother. She'd been afraid to, worried that whatever image her mother had of her would be destroyed. She didn't think that was the case with her Aunt Jessica. It didn't hurt that she really didn't have that much to hide from her aunt, either.

She saw Jenny the next afternoon as she walked home from school. Jenny's cheeks were flushed and her eyes were alight.

"You're in a good mood."

"We're going to be spending the weekend together, well, except for work."

"Is he the one?"

Jenny laughed. "I think it's way too soon to decide that, but..."

"But... ?"

"I wouldn't mind spending a lot more time with him. By the way, Mom said something to me this morning. She said that if I saw you, to tell you she has news of your parents."

"Did she say what?"

Jenny shook her head. "She wouldn't even tell me, not even a hint."

Aunt Jessica wasn't home when Danielle and Jenny got there. Jenny changed and went over to her boyfriend's, saying she was having dinner there. Danielle opened her books and began doing her homework. She'd decided that the earlier she got it done, the better; of course she secretly figured that if she got her homework done too early, she'd just end up with more of it.

Aunt Jessica still wasn't home by dinner, so Danielle decided to make it.

After a brief study of the pantry, she decided they were going to have something she'd seen Chef Paul make: beef and gravy in pastry shells. She had all of the ingredients, and it was easy to make. She sliced up some vegetables and started them on a low simmer; she'd serve them in butter sauce. She peeled and poached the potatoes. While that was going on she started the pastry shells. She grilled the beef chunks, and then made the gravy.

Aunt Jessica looked a little harried when she got home. "Oh thank you," she said when she came into the kitchen. "Everything looks good."

"I think it's horribly under seasoned," Danielle admitted.

"I could tell you to season to taste," Aunt Jessica said, "but we'll work on that tomorrow night."

Aunt Jessica, when pressed, finally explained what had happened. "One of our people is imprisoned in Florence. The Security Commission is going to send in a team."

"What were they arrested for?" Danielle asked.

"Heresy. That's the official charge, but the authorities there are in that phase of any revolution by fanatics where people are arrested pretty much at random. Their execution is scheduled for tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? But—but what about getting a fair trial and stuff like that?"

Aunt Jessica shook her head. "It doesn't happen with what's going on right now. It's like there's a collective frenzy, and they keep killing more and more people until people get tired of it and put an end to it. Some revolutions reach that point fairly quickly. Others, though, turn into bloody nightmares that last for years."

"So what are they going to do?"

"The Security Commission is sending in a team. They'll try to break them out of prison. I imagine they'll succeed, they're very good at this sort of thing. The only question will be how high the body count will be, and how they'll cover it."

"Cover it? How do you cover it if there are a lot of dead bodies?"

"I don't know. They have their ways. If I was doing it, I'd find someone to make it look like some foreign power did it."

"Well then—"

"I keep thinking I did something, or had them do something that caused this whole mess." She seemed to slump on herself. "Food."

"Already taken care of," Danielle said.

"Where's Jenny?"

"At her boyfriend's. She's having dinner there."

"And she'll probably spend the night." Aunt Jessica nodded. "Okay. What did you make?"

"Something I learned at the restaurant. It should be ready in about ten minutes."

"Thank you, dear."

Dinner was a success. Uncle Jack complimented her on it. As they finished, though, he said "Your mother called this morning."

"This morning? How? She isn't here, is she?"

"No, but it looks like she will be." He looked at Aunt Jessica. "You need to go monitor what's happening in Florence. I'll tell her."

He settled them in the study while Aunt Jessica got her things and left.

"Your father had a heart attack. He's in the hospital, and resting comfortably. The doctors got to him in time. He'll be in the Cardiac Care Unit for at least another week, and then he'll probably be in intensive care for a while longer."

"He'll be all right though, won't he?"

Uncle Jack nodded. "He'll be on a restricted diet, and they're recommending he do something that will be less stressful."

Danielle slumped a little. "That probably means getting out of politics."

"Just between you and me, I don't think he was going to win the next election. According to your mother the numbers weren't looking good. Apparently the people moving into his district really don't agree with his politics."

"Do you think he'll have to resign?" He nodded. "But why?"

"His health. If he quites now, he'll go out on a high note. It'll be seen as for health reasons rather than simply losing. That could help him in the future."

She tried to picture her father not going to Sacramento each year. Somehow she was drawing a blank. She hadn't followed his political career, but she knew he was always meeting people, always talking to them, and constantly involved in government. It was so much a part of him, and she couldn't see him not doing it.

"He must think he's sicker than he is," she said softly.

"Very likely. Some people overstate their own medical problems, others understate them and suffer later on." Uncle Jack frowned. "It's too soon to tell which your father is. Your mother doesn't want to take any chances."

"Do you think he could come here?"

"I think it's very likely. There are things he could do—"

"Such as what?"

"Work for the Security Commission for one. Oh," he waved his hand, "not as a field agent or an Operative, but as an insider in California politics. One of our gates is there, the one you came through, and that makes us constantly checking on local conditions."

She tried to think of what she knew about the Security Commission. "Wouldn't that mean he'd have to live in Center?"

"Not necessarily. A job like that, well, he could live here and telecommute." He laughed. "We can do that here, and the Commission can do it, but almost no one else can."

The idea of having her parents around was ... She wasn't sure. Her parents should have seen what was going on in her life, but they hadn't. Aunt Jessica and Uncle Jack had been firmer than her parents, but in little ways. Yet here she was, looking forward to college and having a chance to do something she found interesting. How would that change with her parents around?

"Mixed emotions?"

She nodded. "I want to see them, but..."

"You're growing up, and you're looking at your own life, aren't you."

She nodded again.

"We'll see how your father recuperates. The odds are very good that he'd be given permission to move here, but there's a chance that it might not happen. And if he does, he won't be allowed to go back."

"I was."

Uncle Jack nodded. "You were a special case, and with your mother..."

"So I've learned. She looked at the time. "When can I learn more?"

"When I learn more."

Danielle sighed; she hated waiting, "I guess I have some studying to do."

She went up to her room, did her homework, and then sat at the window staring at the stars. She tried to imagine what life would be like without her father. Being away from her parents had been good. She had her own life, and it wasn't a reflection of the lives around her, those girls in Tiburon who played with fire and got burned, her parents, or even the creature her teachers wanted her to be.

The girl who'd left Tiburon with her Aunt Jessica had been very much a girl. She still was in many ways, but now she realized she liked herself. She was kind of the person she wanted to be. That felt scary, but scary-good.

She'd thought she'd had friends in Tiburon, but there'd really only been Kendra. Here she had some people she could really confide in, and trust that her secrets wouldn't be all over school in an hour. That felt good, too, another 'scary-good',.

You didn't wake up one morning and say "Today I am a grown-up". It sort of snuck up on you. She'd read that in some cultures there was a ceremony marking the moment you became an adult. That didn't happen here. You changed gradually until you were there. Then you could look back and recognize the child that you had been, and were no longer. But in her case it appeared she was seeing the process. She hadn't reached the dividing line, but she was close.

She stared up in the sky, and realized one other thing: no airplanes. She knew there were planes around, she'd heard one from time to time, and seen a few. But the sky over the Bay was always busy. Here you didn't see it. In some ways she missed it, and in some ways she didn't. It just reinforced that this was a completely different world, but one she sort of liked.

Liked? Well, maybe. It was certainly one she was accustomed to, one she actually felt at home in.

-------

Her father was sitting up in bed, a tube in his nose, and an IV attached to his arm.

"How are you, Dad?"

He grinned at her, though it looked a little forced and the skin of his ace was paler than she remembered. "Would you believe they flew me to the hospital? My first time in a helicopter, and I was unconscious and didn't get to look around."

"The doctor said you're going to be all right."

"That's what they tell me." He sighed. "I just had a wake-up call. It was almost the Last Trumpet, but it wasn't, quite."

"Mom said you might resign from the Assembly."

"I sent my resignation in this morning."

"But you're going to get better."

"I need to find a less stressful occupation." He grinned again. "Of course I had the last laugh on Larry Bowen and the others who've been slandering me. By resigning when I did, they can't hold a special election to fill my seat. Larry will have to wait until after the General Election before he can get his hands into the General Fund and start paying off his supporters."

"That's something that's bothered me," Danielle admitted. "You know he's a crook, but you can't have him arrested or anything."

"I know what he is, but I can't prove it in a court of law. That's one of the frustrations of politics. You all pretend to be honorable people, but there are plenty of scoundrels in this business." He shook his head slightly. "It's time I got out of it. Sooner or later reality will catch up with these people. I tried to inject some into the Assembly, but no longer. I'll have time for the family, and it won't be "photo ops". I'm looking forward to that."

Her older sister pushed forward. Danielle stepped back a little. She'd heard that her sister was getting interested in politics. They really hadn't talked since her sister had graduated from high school, so she didn't know if this was something that had been simmering for years, or was a newly found passion. In either case she wasn't interested. She had her own future, and in a world that made a little more sense.

On the trip here from Valley's End she'd had a chance to look at a newspaper. She'd been just as uninterested in the events of the day as she had when she'd been in school in Tiburon, but now it was because she had other things that interested her.

She looked out the window. It was a sunny day by Bay Area standards, with the fog clinging close to the water. She could see a ship plowing through the water, and streets crowded with cars.

Dr. Waverly was standing in the waiting room talking with another doctor. She saw Danielle, and joined her.

"He doesn't look as well as I thought he would," Danielle said.

"It was a major heart attack. Five more minutes and it would have been too late. The emergency crew on the helicopter did wonders."

"I guess." Danielle was silent until they were in the car with her mother. "He will be moving to the Project, won't he?"

"I think it's for the best. We've started the process. We'll have to wait until he's stronger. Moving to the Project could be a large shock, and he's already had enough of that for the time being."

Danielle looked at the trees. Spring had come to Tiburon, and the weather was warming up. Once she would have welcomed it. Now she found she missed what she knew back in Valley's End. She felt like an alien here. She was no longer a creature of this place, but a girl, a young woman, of Three Valleys.

"Let's bring him home as soon as we can," she told her mother, and got an answering smile


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The End
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Posted:  2008-09-04
Last Modified: 2012-02-21 / 11:14:55 pm
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