Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Six: Problems at School

<Nanocloud>: Andrew? You awake?

I groggily shook off the chains of sleep. It was…. three-thirty in the morning? Meaning ten o’clock in London. 

Anne didn’t usually call so late.

<Belessar>: I am now. What’s up?

<Nanocloud>: Need to talk. I had a bit of a screw-up.

<Belessar>: Are you all right? Anyone hurt?

<Nanocloud>: … Not physically.

<Belessar>: What happened?

<Nanocloud>: I accidentally told Nick about his dad.

<Belessar>: Who’s Nick?

<Nanocloud>: Molly Pemberley and Avi Goldman’s son. Nicholas.

<Belessar>: Oh. I remember you telling me about them. What did you tell this Nicholas about his dad?

<Nanocloud>: Basically that he existed. 

<Belessar>: Maybe you’d better start over.

<Nanocloud>: Okay. So it appears Nick didn’t know he had a dad.

<Belessar>: Did the kid think he was an immaculate conception?

<Nanocloud>: Not that way, Andrew! He thought he was a sperm donor baby. 

<Belessar>: Wait, how do you even know this kid?

<Nanocloud>: He goes to my school.

<Belessar>: He attends Sandhurst Prep?

<Nanocloud>: Yeah, he’s one of my classmates. We were friends.

<Belessar>: ‘Were’ friends? That sounds ominous.

<Nanocloud>: I kind of let slip that I knew his dad, which led to some awkward questions.

<Belessar>: I take it you handled the questions? Told him to talk to his mother first?

<Nanocloud>: Um. Not so much.

<Belessar>: What did you do?

<Nanocloud>: I kind of ran away and hid in the girls’ bathroom until he left.

<Belessar>: …. Anne, you don’t even run from Xeranai Battleships.

<Nanocloud>: I panicked, okay? It was stressful.

<Belessar>: And a nationally televised interview wasn’t? 

<Nanocloud>: Look, I got anxious. It happens.

<Belessar>: Why? He’s a kid. You’re Nanocloud.

<Nanocloud>: Yeah, but I work with his mom. Plus he’s super nice and I …. feel bad about the whole thing.

<Belessar>: How much did you tell him?

<Nanocloud>: It sort of accidentally came out. He wanted to take up karate. I told him his dad was really good…

<Belessar>: But you didn’t know. 

<Nanocloud>: Yeah, and now he’s mad at me.

<Belessar>: Why?

<Nanocloud>: I didn’t tell him the name. Just that I knew his dad.

<Belessar>: And then when he asked for more details, you ran off.

<Nanocloud>: Look, I was worried, okay? I’d already let out one secret, I didn’t want to make things worse…. 

<Belessar>: So you ran away. Did he chase you?

<Nanocloud>: Sally said he was looking for me at first. He gave up and went home. 

<Belessar>: Do I need to have a talk with this kid about boundaries?

<Nanocloud>: Absolutely not. I don’t want a repeat of the Brad incident.

<Belessar>: Fine. What’s Molly saying about this?

<Nanocloud>: I don’t know. I’d like to not completely piss off the woman who commands attack helicopters.

<Belessar>: Not to mention UAVs, tanks, and a whole lot of heavy artillery. You haven’t spoken to her yet?

<Nanocloud>: Not since this happened.

<Belessar>: Wait, when did this happen exactly?

<Nanocloud>: … about four hours ago. 

<Belessar>: Have you told Paul?

<Nanocloud>: Kind of working up the courage to explain. Come home, please? I could use some moral support.

<Belessar>: So let me get this straight. You let drop a secret that changes the boy’s life, ran away when confronted, and are currently hiding in fear of the woman who commands a division of highly trained soldiers. And you haven’t told your father yet. 

<Nanocloud>: Like I said, I could use moral support. 

<Belessar>: I’ll be there in the morning. 

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was seven-thirty when I called Sarah Palmer.

Dr. Palmer answered the call, bright and early as was her habit. “Belessar. To what do I owe the honour of an early morning video call?”

“I need to swing by London for a couple of days.”

An eyebrow went up. “Now?”

“It’s family. Can you cover things for a few days?”

“Depends. You wanted to start work on the octanitrocubane - any progress there?

“Not yet, but if I’m in London I can cannibalize some of my stocks to get started.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow. “You have stocks of octanitrocubane?”

“The Starfall missile warheads.”

“Isn’t that like eating your seed corn?”

“I can replace the cannibalized ones as we churn out more of the octanitrocubane. Besides, I do need to swing by for about a week.”

“Fine. See if you can stop by the office for a few days, Armand’s been complaining about some issues and it would be a good idea to check in with him.”

Travelling from Mumbai to London is a ten-hour flight, for those with private jets and other conveniences. 

Even without a dedicated foldspace gate, it’s seven thousand plus kilometres between the two cities, so it would take me fourteen hundred full-range teleports - and more than four hours - to cover the distance myself. 

I, of course, am a cheating cheater who cheats. So I did the thing rich billionaires do, and hired a Traveler to get me home. 

Traveler services aren’t exactly cheap, of course. Time is money and all that. Paul had cashed in on a favour from BAE and throwing Nanocloud’s name around to get us shifted from Tanisport, and it had still cost us thousands of dollars. Made cheaper by the fact that the Traveler in question was from London and looking for a ‘fare’ back from Tanisport. 

Mumbai to London was a standard commercial route, one in high demand, and thus cost me thirty thousand dollars. 

Time that would now be spent running the fullersteel furnaces. Without leaving me stuck in mid-air in case an alert came through from the Stratospheric Guard. I even had time for a quick jaunt to the local sweetshop, which offered a delightfully delicious range of desserts for a light lunch. (Yum.) 

It was seven a.m., London time, when I walked through the door to our little house / armoured fortress in the middle of Fry’s Lane. 

Yes, I had reinforced the walls with a bit of extra fullersteel and mounted three plasma cannons on the roof. Don’t judge me until you’ve had your house shot up by hostile aliens. 

I waved at the Protection Command van not-so-stealthily concealed by the shrubbery - the Brits were taking the threat of assassins seriously, which was good - and then rang the bell like a normal adult returning home.

“Dad, Andrew’s home!” came the yell from upstairs. Naturally, Anne’s bots were watching everything near the house. 

“Coming,” grumbled the voice of a sleep-deprived Paul, who slid open the door, steaming cup of tea in hand. “Andrew? This is a surprise.”

I took a deep breath. “Did Anne talk to you?”

An eyebrow went up. “Last night. She didn’t mention you’d be coming.”

“Has Pemberley called?”

“Surprisingly, not yet. Come on in.”

We sat by the dining table as I rehashed what Anne had told me nine hours ago. “So it looks like she let the cat out of the bag, well before Pemberley could talk to her son,” I summarized. 

Paul nodded as he sipped his tea. “She’ll definitely call. When it comes, I should talk to her.”

“Both of us should.”

“Andrew, this is more of a parent-to-parent conversation.”

“And an adult-to-adult conversation, as well. Besides, I have to work with Pemberley. I don’t want her resenting Anne for her own oversight.”

“Oversight?”

I shrugged. “She should have told the kid earlier.”

“The ‘kid’, as you refer to him, is barely sixteen.”

“So’s Anne, and she’s dealt with far worse.”

Paul pursed his lips. “In the interest of avoiding an argument, you can be on the call. Let me lead, though.” 

Anne walked into the kitchen in teddy-bear pyjamas. “Hey, Andrew. What’s for breakfast, Dad?”

“Do you want to change?”

“I’ve got time before school.”

“I was thinking you might not want to greet Commodore Pemberley in your PJs.”

Anne made a face. “Fine, I’ll go change. Andrew, did you bring jalebis?”

“That’s the first question you ask?”

“Hey, you were in India. Aren’t jalebis really cheap there? Like, a dozen for a dollar or something?”

“... Yes, they are.”

“So, how many did you bring?”

“I thought you wanted me for my moral support?”

“That doesn’t mean you can skip snack duty. Give.”

“Fair enough,” I sighed, pulling out the packages from inventory. “Twenty dollars worth of jalebis, twenty dollars worth of gulab jamuns, and twenty dollars worth of laddoos.”

Paul groaned as I left the (very large) packages on the table. “Do you have any idea how much fridge space that’s going to take?”

“I figured you could ration it. Maybe send over a few to Pemberley as a peace offering.”

“I wouldn’t normally share my sweets,” Anne said, “but desperate times call for desperate measures. You should have brought more, though.”

“Let’s see what she says, first,” replied Paul. “Speaking of which… change, young lady, and then we see what sweets you get.”

“Hey! My sweets.”

“Not until AFTER we speak to Commodore Pemberley. I might end up sending her the whole bunch.”

“Dad!”

“Depends on the size of apology she wants. And the size of the refrigerator she has.”

“She can also stash extras in the Division’s cold storage room,” I added helpfully. “They have enough capacity to feed an army - literally.”

“Which may happen, unless someone gets dressed real quick,” Paul hinted meaningfully.

“Fine, Dad, I’ll go,” huffed Anne. “The sweets better be there when I get back, though.”

It was half past eight when the videophone rang.

Molly Pemberley’s tired face stared out at us. “Paul. Belessar. Anne.”

“Good morning, Commodore Pemberley,” Paul replied. “What can we do for you?”

“I rather suspect you know what this is about.”

“I have an inkling, yes.”

“I’ve had quite a night, you see. Training exercises with the Third Armoured, riding herd on Tansy Partridge’s replacement, and trying to avoid the newbies from killing themselves before they so much as see a Sarnak. Then they tell me Angus Shaw’s replacement is being delayed because the new appointee crashed his car into the Tyne at two hundred kilometres per hour. And finally, I get home to my son, who decides today is the best possible day to ask pointed questions about his father.” Pemberley’s eyes seemed to bore through the screen. “Might I ask, Nanocloud, if you’ve ever heard of the concept of privacy?”

“As I understand, Commodore,” Paul said, “this wasn’t a conversation that involved you at all. It was a conversation between Anne and one of her classmates.”

“I’m talking to Anne.”

“Are you calling as a colleague, or as a parent?”

Pemberley took a deep breath. “As a parent.”

“Then let’s talk about this parent to parent. Do you believe that Anne’s disclosure was intentional?”

“I’d very much like to know where she got this information from, to start with.”

“Anne,” Paul said. “Would you like to tell us how you came across this information?”

“Avi Goldman’s grave,” Anne said. “I have some nanobots there.”

“Why, exactly, do you have nanobots parked at Avi Goldman’s grave?”

“I wanted to attend his funeral,” Anne whispered. “He… died protecting me. I couldn’t go, not right then, so I sent a group of nanobots to stay with his body.”

“I thought your nanobots couldn’t travel across the ocean,” Pemberley said. “They buried him at Arlington, didn’t they?”

“They took him on a plane; my bots went along with it.”

Pemberley paused. “That was more than a year ago, Anne. How long were your bots active for?”

“Uh, they’re still running.”

“So… you can see everything that’s going on wherever you’ve put a bot.” Pemberley closed her eyes. “For more than a year.”

“Not everywhere. Most of my bots break down over time; these ones just didn’t have a lot to do. They’re basically parked on the headstone and only move to avoid pigeons.”

“And they give you - what, full visual and audio coverage?”

“Yes. I, uh, I could see you when you came to pay your respects to Colonel Goldman - and I heard what you said.”

“I see.” Pemberley sighed. “It didn’t strike you that this might be private?”

“I’m sorry,” Anne replied. “At first it seemed like a small thing. Not worth really talking about. I didn’t realize that Nick might not know…”

“Which brings us to where we stand today,” added Paul. “I understand you told Nicholas that his father was an anonymous donor? Instead of a war hero? Forgive me, but that makes little sense to me as a parent.”

Pemberley gave Paul an annoyed look. “Avi Goldman had kids of his own. And a wife.”

“Ah, that makes more sense.”

“And now Nicholas wants to meet his half-siblings.”

“I didn’t tell him the name,” gasped Anne.

“Oh?” Pemberley’s eyebrows went up. “The first question Nicholas asked me when I walked in was ‘Why didn’t you tell me Avi Goldman was my father?’ I assumed you’d told him everything.”

“I swear, I did not tell him Colonel Goldman’s name.”

“What exactly did you say to him? The words.”

“I told him…” Anne hesitated. “I told him that his father saved my life at the Tower of London, and that he was an unarmed combat champion.”

Molly Pemberley closed her eyes for a moment, wincing as if in pain. Then, she spoke up. “I guess his internet search skills have improved. The list of those killed at the Tower is fairly short.”

“Something we owe to Anne,” I put in.

“I’m aware of that. It doesn’t make things any less painful, though. He knows about his half-brother and half-sister, and wants to connect with them. Which would do nothing but hurt Harriet, and seriously disrupt the children’s lives - I won’t do that to Avi’s kids.”

“How old are they?” asked Paul.

“Nine and seven.”

“Then perhaps you can point out to your son that it might be too early for them to make an informed decision. Their boundaries deserve to be respected, after all.”

Pemberley sighed, the fight seeming to have gone out of her. “I’ll try. In the meantime, I have a hormonal teenager to deal with.”

“Might I say something here, parent-to-parent?” 

“Go on.”

“Your son was able to use a couple of off-the-cuff remarks to trace out the identity of his father. That speaks of passion and skill. Calling him a hormonal teenager is doing him a disservice.”

“And what would you recommend?”

“The truth. Explain why you couldn’t tell him. He seems smart; he’ll understand.”

“He’s the most level-headed in our class,” chipped in Anne. “Doesn’t fool around like Reg or Flavia.” 

“Your friend Flavia once crank called me while roaring drunk. It’s not exactly a high bar.”

“How many people did she call?” muttered Anne. 

“Quite a few, as I recall. And Reg has a tendency to do worse. Much worse.”

“I think I need to meet your friends, Anne,” Paul murmured. “In any case, Commodore, I would still recommend you extend a measure of trust to your son. Tell him the truth. He seems to have found out most of it, anyway.”

“I will take that under advisement,” Pemberley replied. “However. This cannot happen again. Not to anyone. Is that clear, Nanocloud?”

“Understood.”

“And turn off any nanobots you have following me, or Nicholas, around.”

“I don’t have any,” replied Anne. “And, um, I won’t be doing that unless someone specifically requests it.”

“She will maintain an adequate reserve around herself, though,” I chimed in. “Purely for self-defence purposes.”

“That goes without saying. Good day.” Pemberley cut the call. 

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------

“That went better than expected,” I said as Paul unpacked the sweets, sorting them into boxes.

“Indeed it did,” he replied. “We should still send over some sweets as an apology. I’d bake a cake but my gift with the oven isn’t nearly as good as yours.”

“I can bake a cake.”

“Got a quest?”

“No, not as such.”

“Then I suggest Anne should do it. It’ll be more meaningful, as an apology, coming from her.”

“Or she might set the oven on fire.”

“Then you build her an inventech oven that’s fireproof. You can do that, right?”

“I’m not sure….”

NEW QUEST ALERT: BUILD THE NEXT GENERATION BAKER’S OVEN.

BLUEPRINT UNLOCKED: BELESSAR’S BRILLIANT BAKING OVEN

1x MEDIUM POWER PACK

4 KG BORON CARBIDE

6 KG HIGH-GRADE STEEL

1 GLASS PLATE

1 GRAVITIC CONTROL ARRAY

2 SMARTPHONES

2 METRES PLASMA CONDUIT

4 LITRES STEALTH PAINT

2 METRES NANOFIBRE CORD

REWARD: A BAKING OVEN THAT IS FIREPROOF, BLAST PROOF, AND NOVICE BAKER PROOF. +1 XP AND A SURPRISE.

Sometimes it feels like my power is trolling me. Oh, who are we kidding?

It feels like that all the time.

Paul sighed. “Don’t tell me you got a quest for that.”

“It’s only worth 1 XP.”

“Well, it’s not like you don’t get oddball quests every now and then. That reminds me, did you ever pay for those pants?”

“No,” I groaned. “The store I stole the pants from went out of business, and I couldn’t find the owner. After Second Tanisport, the place burnt down and I can’t trace anyone to pay in the city records.”

“My sympathies. At least you don’t have any other oddball quests.”

“Actually - there was an update for the missing children quest.”

“... there was?” Anne piped up. “Hasn’t it been a year?”

“It has,” observed Paul, “and you’re about to get late for school today, young lady.”

“Considering yesterday’s situation, I was hoping for a parent’s note. Besides, this is ultrahuman business.” Anne snagged one of the jalebis. “What was in the update?”

“I ran into this ultra in Mumbai called Porcupine. She has a younger brother who’s missing, and asked me if I could look into it. That’s when I got a quest update.” I explained the notification. “So… there could be something going on which needs - calls for - my attention.”

“I’m not sure what you could do that the police couldn’t,” said Paul.

“I think you should check it out,” Anne said. “Remember, we didn’t let up on the hints about the Grunters? And because of that we found the mansion, and, well, everybody?”

“That’s a valid point. Taking down the Grunters…” I paused. “That was a few thousand XP. This quest is ten million.”

“So that means it’s important, right?”

“Anne…” I took a deep breath. “The mansion raid got me 9,000 XP, and saved eighty-seven people. This mission is offering ten million. How many people do you think it could be affecting?”

Anne gulped. “I’m not liking that number.”

“Neither am I. But if close to a hundred thousand people - a hundred thousand children - are missing, then it means that something really scary is going on. And I haven’t a clue what it is.”

“Then you need to focus on what you can do,” said Paul. “You already have a mission in Mumbai, don’t you?”

“I do. Turns out that picocicrin and octanitrocubane - at least in the quantities I make - are useful ingredients for aerovascar synthesis.”

“So you’re planning to synthesize them at Farnborough?”

“Yes. I need two hundred tons of picocicrin permanganate, and two hundred and twenty-five thousand tons of octanitrocubane.”

Paul frowned. “I must have misheard. Did you mean you need two thousand two hundred and twenty-five tons of the most dangerous non-nucear explosive on the planet?”

“I need two hundred and twenty-five thousand tons of it, Paul.”

“... You realize the risk of making that much. And storing it in one place.”

“Which is why I want it done here, where I can control the synthesis, and shipped by Traveller. Preferably in small batches.”

“.... they’d better be really small batches, because if there’s even a tiny goof-up ….”

“No more Traveller. I got that.”

“This is the kind of thing you should be telling Pemberley. In her official capacity.”

“I’m better off talking to Gideon. My guess is he’ll ask for something from the Indian government in return.”

“Tax breaks on the new orders he’s expected, I suppose.” Paul shrugged. “Just be careful. Travellers aren’t the only ones at risk when that much octanitrocubane is around.”