The Heiress E-Book

Eric Hoffman

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to wake up in an entirely new world?

Heiress is not the name that her mother gave her, but it's as good a name as she could ever think up for herself.  Her mother told her to stay hidden, to blend in with the crowd, and never to ineract with people from their place of origin. Even though she has never been to her mother's homeland, she knows it well.  She just doesn't understand why they had to leave...

Could it have something to do with the mysterious "innovator" that her mother warned her about?  Is that why her mother left her in this strange place with only a computerized teacher to guide her?  Who are all these uniquely gifted agents who are looking for her?  And when will her mother come back for her to answer all of her questions?

Until they are reunited, Heiress will have to do her best to build a life among people of a different culture.  Join her in this first of a literary series of novelettes in which she works to figure out her place in a world she barely understands.

Leseprobe

Eric Hoffman

The Heiress

To my child, who has shown me so many new worlds.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Prelude

“It’s hot in here. Can’t we roll down a window or something?” The limousine shifted on its axles when he squirmed in his seat.

She wondered why she ever brought her moronic brother along. “No. We’re supposed to be discrete, remember? These are tinted windows, so no one can see who we are until we get to the bank. It’s essential to the plan.”

He shifted in his seat again and pulled at his collar. “Then maybe we need to change the plan. I’m burning up in here.”

She pushed the intercom button. “Roderick, turn up the air conditioning a couple of notches.” She faced him squarely. “You better not screw this up. I’m counting on you. If anything goes wrong, you know what father is going to do to you, right?”

He didn’t look at her. “Ease up, sis. I had R and D work on the gloves. They amped up the power a hundred and seventy-five percent. I’ve even been practicing my moves, so don’t worry about me. I can handle anything they throw at me.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, genius.” She was already annoyed about having to ride backwards because he got carsick. His typical macho fascination with physical power had pulled him off track once again. “The whole reason we’re here is to make sure father’s little savings-and-loan company gets its act together. We go in, we tell the manager what’s at stake here, we give him some time to comply, and then we go home and tell father it’s taken care of. That’s the plan.”

He looked puzzled. “I thought we were going to lean on him. Isn’t that why we brought all that equipment in the trunk?”

“We only open the trunk if the manager doesn’t cooperate. Will you think for a minute? How’s it going to look if we walk into a bank armed to the teeth and demand to see the manager?”

He thought for a minute. She could tell he was thinking because he always got a blank expression every time he forced his brain to work. “Like we’re robbing the place, right?”

She sighed. “When we get there, please let me do the talking.”

Chapter One

The process was complete. It had taken nearly a complement of piin’mikts, but it wasn’t as painful as she feared it might be. The pedagogicus was correct: it was as if she had taken a long nap full of dreams, waking only briefly whenever a new structure had developed enough to spasm. With a series of clicks around the rim of the portal to her Créche, a sound that reminded her of the fluttering of a bird’s wing as it launches itself into the air, the cover lifted up and shifted to the right letting in a gust of cool Appalachian air. The sensation was exciting, bringing tiny bumps to the surface of her brand new integument. Carefully, she raised one of her locomotory appendages and pushed it into the world.

Wait. Time was not measured in mikts here. She would have to get used to that. It was “days” when referring to the planet’s rotation and “years” when referring to its revolution about its native star. A day was broken into two complements of “horas”—no, it was “hours” in the local language—and each hour was divided into five complements of “minutes”. Why five, she wondered. Wouldn’t it be more consistent to shorten the minute to accommodate a sixth complement? She would have to ask about that when she met an actual Human.

She positioned her manipulatory appendages to assist in the shifting of her center of gravity so that she could maneuver out of the Créche. The walls of the chamber were made of stone. She had expected that. Her mother had placed her Créche in something called a cave, away from curious Kozian eyes. The same independent power source that powered her Créche also bent light to hide the cave’s entrance. The source of the power sat to the right of the Créche, with conduits branching out of it like the manipulatory appendages of a jh’zuul’t. She found her own appendage pointing at the source as she identified it. Odd that it should do that.

There was another container sitting next to the power source. It was about two-point-five times larger and opened from the top like her Créche. She lifted the lid and found what the pedagogicus told her she would find: several pieces of technology, nutritional supplements, Kozian currency, and a pile of folded fabric. That’s right, she thought, Kozians wear clothing. What was the word Kozians use when they‘ve forgotten something obvious? Of course: “duh!” She lightly thumped the front of her cranium with one manipulatory appendage as she said it, just as the pedagogicus had taught her to do. She rubbed the place she had thumped next, thinking that next time she would thump herself with a little less force.

She found two conjoined tubes of fabric on top of the stack and remembered that these were designed to cover her two locomotory appendages. Pants, she thought as she pointed at them. She grabbed the pants by the conjoined portion, made the attempt to lift her limbs into the tubes, and promptly fell to the ground. How do Kozians apply pants, she wondered, if gravity prevents them from lifting their lower appendages? She stood and stared at them, deep in thought. Perhaps she could try lifting one appendage at a time, but doing so only resulted in falling to the side. She tried scooting into the pants, first by placing the subdivided ends of her appendages—her “toes” she reminded herself--into the tubes and shuffling slowly forward. She found that she could only apply the pants partially before a wad of fabric prevented further forward motion. Scooting faster did not yield better results. It finally occurred to her that she could raise her appendages if she began in a horizontal position on the ground. Luckily the Kozian form was flexible enough to accomplish the task, but she needed to assume a vertical position halfway through the process if she wanted the pants to be raised high enough to be fastened around her midsection. Fabric that covered her upper form, where most of her internal organs were housed, was easier to apply because she could raise her manipulatory appendages independently without shifting her center of mass uncomfortably away from her axis of balance. The pedagogicus had informed her of the social relevance of these fabrics, but had not prepared her to apply them with grace. This was another area she would have to investigate.

If only her mother were here. She was certain that her mother would be able to convey the answers to the questions that the pedagogicus had not addressed. It was not that the pedagogicus was flawed; it simply was not designed to explain everything. She knew experience would provide insight beyond the limits of the pedagogicus’ operational parameters.

Even mothers could not answer all of the questions that would surely occur to her. She knew this. She even knew that her mother would not be present for this, her Day of Maturation. It had all been explained in a message that her mother had left with the pedagogicus. Circumstances were not ideal, the message had said, and she would need to finish her metamorphosis alone and remain discreet afterward, blending into Kozian society as best she could until her mother could rejoin her. Avoid identifying herself as Prægk to any Kozian and, should she meet another Prægk, inform them that she was investigating Kozian interaction as a member of the Order of Scholars. Interact with other Prægk as little as possible. Above all else, if she met any with connections to the innovator she was to disappear, whatever the cost. She had no idea what the innovator was, but she would remain alert nonetheless. Experience would undoubtedly clarify these instructions. Still, having a mother around to solve the mystery of pants would have prevented a few patches of discolored integument that landing on the hard ground had caused.

Her primary directive was to establish herself as a useful member of Kozian—no, “Human”—society. This is what the “Human” currency was for. Most of what her mother had left for her could be left in the container, but some of it would need to be added to the great pool of currency on which Human society had come to depend. It was foolish, of course, to base the health of a society on something so material, but the pedagogicus had explained that this was the current status of Kozian cultural development. Many advanced civilizations had gone through similar phases and had successfully emerged, becoming wiser for the experience. It was the collective hope of the Prægk that the dominant species inhabiting this world in the Kozian system would emerge as well. When that time arrived, the Prægk would present themselves and invite the Kozians to join with them in the great galactic consortium of advanced species. For the time being, however, social wellness on this world was still measured in terms of currency. If she wanted to fit in, she would have to act as if this currency was intrinsically important. She had learned that the place where the currency of individuals joined the larger pool was called a “bank”. Such a place was to be her first destination, so she took several of the small, green pieces of paper—a material derived from botanical resources which she thought was incredibly clever—and placed them in one of the fabric pouches called “pockets” attached to her pants—yet another useful Kozian innovation. She grinned, thinking that she was going to enjoy the cleverness of this species very much.

She took a deep breath as she stood before the masked entrance of the cave, seeing the outside world and knowing that it could not see her yet. What would it feel like? She knew it was precisely seventy-three degrees, as Humans measure heat energy, from the instruments in the Créche, but she didn’t know how seventy-three degrees would feel. Would it be comfortable? How would this new body respond? Humans added fabrics to their bodies if the heat energy was uncomfortably low and removed fabrics if it was uncomfortably high. Beyond that general knowledge provided by the pedagogicus, she had no idea. She would simply need to experience the outside world for herself. Tilting her new cranium backward slightly—another gesture she didn’t consciously cause, it just happened—she stepped forward…

…and could not make herself move beyond the opening of the cave. It was too new. There were too many unknowns. The pedagogicus had trained her well, but it couldn’t teach her everything that she would need to know. What if she made a mistake? What if she made a fool of herself? What if nothing on the planet conformed to her training? Is it possible the Créche’s programming had been outdated and that society had changed while she completed her development? She stood motionless for a very long time, paralyzed by uncertainty, watching the Kozian star climb higher and higher into the sky. In that time, nervous synapses in her new brain shifted and sparkled until at last a new idea had formed. There simply wasn’t any way she was going to find out the answers to her questions, no way could she find evidence to counter her fears, until she moved through that opening.

That single thought stirred her new locomotory appendages into motion. She moved forward.

Chapter Two

Seventy-three degrees felt very nice, as it turned out. Sunlight streaming through the trees of the forest and bathing her skin with warmth was one of the many things she discovered that the pedagogicus could not convey to her. The sound that the wind made as it moved through these trees was also a pleasant sensation, and it was the first time that she was consciously aware of her ability to detect sonic vibrations. Her hands touched the cartilaginous extensions on each side of her cranium as she strained to “hear” other vibrations. She was prepared for visual and chemical stimuli, but hearing was especially and surprisingly fascinating.

She followed the local map that the pedagogicus had recorded in her nervous synapse patterns. If she were to walk in the direction of the planet’s rotation, she knew that she would come upon a path, which would in turn lead her to a paved road. This road would lead her more or less toward the planet’s r’khij pole and she would follow it for several zh’taadi before she would arrive at a Human settlement, a location named “Shenandoah”.

She almost lost her way through the forest because of all the fascinating sights and sounds. The birdsong in particular created an emotional response that nearly overwhelmed her senses. As she walked along counting all the different songs she could distinguish another sound infiltrated the symphony. It was a mechanical sound comprised of several devices moving rapidly, which she inferred based on what the pedagogicus told her was called a “Doppler effect” on this world. She even had a fairly good guess as to what they were. They were called “automobiles”, and she found herself running toward the sound to see them for the first time.

They were a bit more frightening than she had expected. As she walked along the paved road, an automobile or larger vehicle would pass her every twenty-two seconds, on average. They came up behind her at what seemed a dangerous speed, the wall of air they displaced shoving her body forward in a manner she found most inconsiderate. They were quite loud as well, drowning out the sound of the birds. Eventually, she learned how to anticipate their approach and to brace herself against the force of the parabolic displacement wave, but she wondered how the Humans operating the vehicles compensated for missing the wondrous birdsong in all their haste.

Eventually, one of the vehicles slowed and the operator, the first Kozian that she had ever encountered, spoke with a loud voice out of an open window. “Hey, there,” he said, “y’all need a lift somewhere?”

“What is a lift?” she said.

“You know,” he said, “a ride. You want a little help getting where you’re going?”

She thought a moment. She was, of course, fluent in the local Human language, but this Human seemed to be using idioms that the pedagogicus hadn’t disclosed to her. “I am sorry,” she said, “but I do not understand what you are asking me.”

“Honey, I’m just asking if you would like me to take you somewhere. I’m just trying to be helpful.”

“Oh! You are offering me assistance,” she said raising the volume of her voice so that it could be heard over the sound of the passing vehicles. “I am very grateful, but there are so many things I need to encounter before I arrive at the settlement along this road. I must decline your invitation.”

“Suit yourself,” said the operator, “but a young lady like yourself shouldn’t be walking all alone. You take care.” He accelerated his vehicle and continued down the paved road. Why, she wondered, should she not be alone? Was he not alone, sitting in his vehicle? She continued her journey, her thoughts occasionally interrupted by a growling noise that came not from any Human machine, but from her own body. She sensed that it originated in her upper abdomen. It was vaguely uncomfortable, and she sensed that she needed to do something about it.

Of course, she thought. This was a Kozian body. Kozians were not autotrophic like the Cilili or the Gwanza. They were heterotrophic, and that meant that she would need to secure sustenance that her new body could metabolize. She knew that none of the plant life around her could be readily utilized by her Human body; she would have to go to a place where they provide appropriate…what was the word? Food. Luckily, another vehicle slowed as it approached her. She would ask the operator where she might…eat food.

“Hey, good looking!” said the male, younger than the first had been. “You looking for a little excitement?”

What a curious question, she thought. Excitement was a Human response to external stimuli. Humans didn’t need to look for it; it just happened. “I am not,” she said, “but I am looking for food. Do you know where I might find food that is nutritious?”

“Yeah,” said the operator, “I got some food for you. Why don’t you hop on in and we’ll take care of everything.”

“I am very grateful,” she said, “but as I explained to the first vehicle operator, I am enjoying the journey. Perhaps I will hop on your vehicle another time. For now, could you tell me where the food might be?”

“Aw, come on, baby. I ain’t gonna bite.”

Why would he not disclose the location of food to her? Something inside her well-ordered arrangement of neural synapses suggested that this Kozian was not to be trusted. “It is curious that you believe me to be a baby,” she said. “I know for certain that I am an adult Human, not an infant. You may not be interested in biting, but I do wish to bite food. Do you or do you not know where I can find it?”

His mood changed suddenly. “Yeah, okay. I get the message. Geez, you sound like my old girlfriend.”

“Perhaps a companion closer to your own age would bring you less stress.”

His forehead wrinkled slightly as he looked at her and he shook his head from side to side. “Yeah, whatever. If food’s all you want, then go up this road a couple miles and you’ll find a place called Danny and Dina’s on the right side.”

“I can find food there?”

“Yeah. It’s a diner. There’s food there.” He drove away, the wheels of his vehicle accelerating too quickly for the loose terrain alongside the paved road. She marveled at the difference between the two male Humans she had just encountered. The first operator was clearly older and more even tempered. Was attitude a function of age? She decided that she would explore the matter further by observing the males she met. For now, though, the uncomfortable rumblings in her abdomen compelled her to prioritize her physical needs over her more intellectual ones.

Danny and Dina’s Diner had an aroma that she wasn’t sure how to categorize. On the one hand, there were very intriguing smells that certainly came from the preparation of food. It emanated from a rectangular hole in the wall behind a long table, at which several humans sat eating and reading newspapers. These certainly were very wise and informed Humans who kept apprised of current events. On the other hand, there was a more noxious odor that seemed embedded in the materials that covered the variously shaped seats. It was an ashen smell, indicative of something that had burned down to a tar-encrusted residue. Since it didn’t seem to bother the Humans in the room she elected to pretend that it didn’t bother her either. In truth, however, she found herself wondering how to extract oxygen from the air without breathing too deeply.

“Welcome to Danny and Dina’s,” said a smiling woman wearing a dark green covering over her upper body. If the plastic placard she wore under her left clavicle was accurate, her name was Amanda. “Ya’ll want a table or a booth today, hon?”

“Actually,” she said, “I was hoping to purchase some food.”

Amanda looked at her a moment before her mouth opened wide with a sound that was quite startling. “Oh, honey, that’s funny!” she said. “I’ll get you some food all right, but where do y’all want to sit while you’re eating it?”

She smiled, mimicking Amanda’s mirthful response without understanding why it had occurred. “I think I would like to sit in the sun,” she said.

“Not a problem. I’ll just put you by the window,” said Amanda, grabbing a shiny, plastic-covered folder. “Oh, I’m sorry, hon,” she said looking toward the floor, “y’all can’t eat here if you don’t have any shoes.”

She glanced at her feet, dirty from the path she walked. “People cannot eat without shoes?” she said incredulously.

“Not here, anyway,” said Amanda. “We’ve got a sign in the window. Go get your shoes on and we’ll be happy to serve you.”

She could not, for the life of her, figure out the connection between wearing something on your feet and eating, but it wasn’t something she was going to pursue because she didn’t want to appear like an outsider. “Please,” she asked, “Where might a Human like me purchase shoes?”

“You’re in luck, honey. There’s a shoe store right across the street. Go get yourself some shoes and come on back.”