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  “That’s 45 million dollars!” Terry gasped. Dr. Hernandez shrugged. “Dr. Hernandez, where did Dad get the money?”

  “You’ve been gone a long time, Terry. Your father’s been doing a lot of, shall we say, publicity work, with the cetaceans?”

  “What kind of publicity?”

  Dr. Hernandez counted off on his fingers. “There’s a half a dozen advertising campaigns being developed, a TV show, and there’s the Shool thing.”

  “What’s Shool?” Yui asked.

  “The orca’s god,” Terry said. “Advertising? TV show? I thought Mom was against all that.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Hernandez said. “Dr. Clark, Matthew, has been working on this for weeks. The money started rolling in right after the accident. Terrible timing, but I bet Madison would be happy to see how well this is going. The institute’s accounts are in great shape, enough to buy us out of NOAA’s control. As of two days ago, the institute is privately funded.”

  Terry was too stunned to reply immediately, so Dr. Hernandez went back to what he’d been doing. Finally Terry remembered something. “What did you say about Shool?”

  “Some kind of ‘outreach,’ is how your father describes it. I haven’t had time to look into it. If you’ll excuse me now, I need to get some of these notes transcribed.” He didn’t wait for Terry to say anything before walking off.

  “Terry?” Yui asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, confused by what Dr. Hernandez had said. It didn’t make any sense. “Can you help me feed the Sunrise Pod?”

  “Food, food, food!” the bottlenoses were chanting.

  Terry usually took his time, watching the dolphins race after the live fish. This time, with Yui’s help, he rolled the cart over and flipped the dump level. A small waterfall of fish cascaded into the habitat. The dolphins went nuts, thinking it was a new game, and attacked the panicked fish with zeal.

  Terry stared into space, not paying any attention. He turned the cart around and quickly rolled it toward the storage area.

  “Terry, are you okay?”

  “Fine,” he said, remembering she was there. “I have to do something. See you at school Monday?” He gave her a distracted hug, parked the cart, and headed for the elevator, leaving her staring after him in confusion as he went to his father’s office.

  “Dad?” Terry pushed the office door open, but found the office empty. He was about to leave when he noticed some of the new things there.

  A big easel held a meter-tall poster. The image showed an artist’s rendering of an underwater town where dolphins were swimming next to scuba-suited people. “Atlantis Reborn” was written in an exciting font across the top. Another easel held a poster of orcas in an underwater classroom, a Tri-V image of a spaceship displayed before them. “Killer School,” the poster said.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Terry said. There was a third easel, its poster covered with a black fabric cloth. He walked toward it, hand outstretched.

  “Terry.”

  He spun around to see his dad standing at the door. Two strangers were with him, a man and a woman; both were laughing at something and wore expensive suits.

  “Dad,” Terry said, “what the hell is all this?”

  “Son,” his dad said and quickly moved to stop Terry from reaching the covered easel, “what are you doing in my office?”

  “Checking out Killer School,” Terry said, filling his words with scorn, “and Atlantis Reborn.”

  “See,” the woman said and laughed. She had a drink in one hand and looked like she’d already had several. “The boy recognizes a good idea.”

  “Atlantis Reborn?” Terry asked, pointing at the other easel. “What does the Sunrise Pod think of the idea?”

  “Who’s that?” the man asked.

  Terry gawked at his dad in unabashed confusion.

  “Mom was okay with this?”

  “Terry,” his father said, “we’ll talk about this later.”

  “Dad, I—”

  His father put a hand behind his back and began leading him toward the adjoining office door. “Give me five minutes, and we’ll talk.”

  “But, Dad...”

  His father pushed the door open and none too gently moved Terry though it. “Five minutes, young man.” He closed the door behind him. Terry grabbed the handle and found, to his surprise, his dad had locked him in!

  The office was nothing more than a place to have a small private meeting. A few chairs, no desk, and some small tables which could be moved around. He plopped into one of the chairs and glowered. As the minutes slid by, he got angrier and angrier. How could he do this without Mom? She hated the idea of exploiting cetaceans. She’d worked with her father to create the institute the way it was. What would you call those ideas he’d seen except theme parks and stupid TV shows?

  It was almost 20 minutes before the door unlocked, and his dad came in. He stopped just inside and put his hands on his hips. “What was that all about?” he demanded.

  “Dad, Mom would freak out if she saw this!”

  “Who do you think helped design those concepts?”

  “What?”

  “I said, who do you think helped design those concepts?” Terry gawked. “Terrence, your mother loves cetaceans like nobody I’ve ever known. She also recognizes that what we’re doing is expensive and difficult. These projects are ways to obtain funding.”

  “It doesn’t make sense she’d support them,” Terry complained, now questioning his own understanding.

  “Some of them were a bit much for her, but more’s going on here than you understand.”

  “Then why don’t you explain it to me?”

  His dad looked at him for a moment. Terry thought he looked conflicted. Then he sighed and sat in the nearest chair. “Terrence, sorry, Terry, do you know how badly injured your mother is?”

  “Pretty bad,” Terry said timidly.

  “Yeah, bad. But do you know how expensive her medical care is?”

  “Isn’t there insurance?”

  “Insurance? Terry, what kind of insurance covers you when you go free diving with 30-ton whales in the arctic?” Terry shook his head. “The answer is none. So I decided to go forward with some of the plans we hadn’t finalized yet.” He gestured back to his office. “Those ideas are just preliminary. People are so excited by the orcas and bottlenoses, they’re practically throwing money at us. We’re going to use it to do the best we can for them.”

  “Including buying the institute out from the government?”

  “Yeah, including that,” his dad said. “They didn’t want to pay for the humpback expedition, and they certainly weren’t going to pay for your mom’s medical bills. Two people died in the submersible, as well. We couldn’t simply leave their families with nothing.” He sighed. “Do you understand better now?”

  “I think so,” Terry said, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “It’s okay, Son. It looks dodgy, and I should have told you about it last week when much of this went forward. I’ll be sure to talk to you in the future. Okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Don’t you start middle school on Monday?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Terry said.

  “I can’t believe how fast you’re growing up,” his father said, and he stood to give Terry a hug. Terry smiled a little. “I need to get back to work. Okay now?”

  “Sure. Thanks, Dad.” Terry left through his father’s office. As he was walking down the hall toward the elevator, one of the institute’s staff passed with a cart holding buckets of ice and wine.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 11

  Molokai Middle School, Molokai, Hawaii, Earth

  August 18th, 2036

  Terry’s first day at Molokai Middle School wasn’t all that different from the first day in a new grade in elementary school had been, except there were lots of orientation lectures. Unlike elementary school, now he’d have periods with differ
ent teachers on various subjects around the large campus, and those periods rotated daily. Some of the kids seemed intimidated by the variability. Terry wasn’t too bothered by it. They were also issued the newest generation tablet computer, which looked sad next to an alien-made slate. Their schedule was loaded into it.

  For their first year in middle school, the kids shared the same schedules. He was glad for that, because he got to see all his friends, and of course, Yui. He wasn’t happy to be bombarded with questions, though, when they weren’t being given lectures or instructions.

  “Is it true your mom was eaten by a whale?” “Is she a cyborg now like Dale Edwards said?” “Did you really travel to another planet while you were gone?” were a few of the stupidest questions he got just in the three hours before lunch period. Yui had helped by answering many of the worst well before school, during a one-day pre-term meeting Terry hadn’t attended.

  “You said there were worse questions?” he asked her, walking between 2nd and 3rd period.

  “Oh yeah, lots worse,” she said. Terry was a little curious, though not enough to ask.

  Lunch in the larger middle school was a more scattered affair. Everyone in elementary ate at the same time; now they were broken into times by grades. You only saw other age groups in the hallways between classes. The 8th graders were quite a bit bigger, in general, so Terry was fine with that. He settled on tacos from the lunch bar and found Yui.

  They chatted and ate their lunches. A couple of mutual friends who also played baseball came by. Terry was afraid still more questions were coming about his mother, but instead it was all about school and baseball. Neither of the others were into diving. He’d always been surprised so few people on Molokai were. Plenty of surfers, not many divers.

  After lunch was the first class he’d been excited about. Introduction to MST. When he went into the classroom, he almost didn’t recognize Doc, or Mr. Abercrombie as it said on his desk plaque. He was dressed in a suit at least as nice as Terry had seen him wearing the previous year when they’d first been told about the MST classes.

  The entire class took their seats and became quiet quicker than normal. This was the first ever session of the new class, and everyone was excited to find out what they would learn about being a mercenary.

  “Good afternoon, Class,” Doc said. “As you’ll remember from last year, my name is Mr. Abercrombie. However, you can call me Doc in class, if you want.” Smiles broke out around the room. “You’ll recall my job is to help guide your instruction in subjects that will help you decide whether you want to become a mercenary or not.

  “Institutions around the country, and elsewhere in the Earth Republic, have expressed an interest in adding the VOWs scores to their battery of test data in accepting secondary educational candidates. So even if you don’t want to be a merc, and I can tell many of you may not want to be, getting a good score on those tests will be useful to your educational career. Any questions?” A couple of hands went up, and he pointed to a boy.

  “Mr. Abercrombie?”

  “Doc is fine.”

  The boy smiled. “Doc? Why wouldn’t we want to be a merc?” A dozen others echoed their agreement. “You can get rich!”

  “Sure,” Doc agreed. “No doubt about it. Can anyone tell me how rich 96 out of the 100 Alpha Contract merc companies got?” Terry raised his hand, and Doc pointed to him. “Terry?”

  “They didn’t get rich. They’re all dead.”

  “That is exactly correct. You see, it’s statistically the most dangerous job in history. Thousands of men and women went offworld 10 years ago; only around 200 came back alive. Even in the four companies that returned, there were still higher than acceptable casualties.

  “You all know I was a Navy SEAL?” Many nodded; all were listening. “We were the best-trained, best-equipped, hard-as-nails warriors in the US military; some would argue the whole world. A whole bunch of my fellow SEALs took an infiltration and scouting contract. None of them came back alive. None. So you see, it’s not a safe job, regardless of the riches involved.”

  “So now that I’ve explained, do some of you still want to be mercenaries some day?” A few heads bobbed up and down, though, Terry noticed, without the enthusiasm he’d seen earlier. “Okay, good. We fully expect some of you to decide later it isn’t for you, and still more to decide it is. That’s your choice. Now, if you’ll open the file I sent out this morning, we’ll look at some classes coming up, and why they’re important.”

  “That wasn’t at all what I expected,” Yui said after the class.

  “Me either, actually,” Terry admitted. “I thought it would be more stuff about fighting.”

  “Yeah, who needs to know about math to be a merc?” another kid asked on the way by.

  “Hey, Terry,” Doc said, coming over. “What did you think of my first class?”

  “Interesting stuff, Doc,” Terry said.

  “Hey, Yui, can I talk to Terry for a sec?”

  “Sure thing,” Yui said. “Cool class.”

  “Sorry about your mom,” Doc said as soon as they were alone. “I thought about coming by, but it didn’t seem like the right thing to do.”

  “Thanks,” Terry said. It sounded lame, but it was all he could think of.

  “Is she recovering?”

  “The doctors are worried about her brain,” Terry explained.

  “How long was she without oxygen?”

  “Nine minutes.”

  Doc winced. “Yeah, that’s bad.” He looked sideways, his brows crinkling up. “You know, I have some friends in the service who are working with some stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Stuff that might be able to help your mom.”

  “Oh! That would be amazing.”

  “Let me make some calls. In the meantime, why don’t you and Yui come by next weekend and we can dive on the Dixie Maru again.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 12

  Kapukahehu Beach, Molokai, Hawaii, Earth

  August 25th, 2036

  The afternoon sun was deliciously hot, prompting Terry to remember why he loved Hawaii so much. His tan had only faded a little from his time in New Orleans. It was hot, like Hawaii, but lacked the excellent cool ocean breezes of his home. Lake Pontchartrain gave no relief to those living on its shores in the summer, despite being just off the Gulf of Mexico. Worse, the city seemed to be a hell pit of humidity capable of melting a battleship.

  He had a stomach full of fish, rice, and vegetables, and couple of Cokes had washed it all down. He was almost asleep in the perfect afternoon. He lazily watched a line of clouds moving east a few miles away, wondering if they’d get close enough to give them some cool rain. Rain in the summer had been insane in New Orleans.

  “I gotta hit the head,” Yui said and rolled off the deck where they’d been lying. He glanced over when she got up and noticed how nice it was to look at her. She didn’t quite look like the blonde girl Hoa had been so interested in, but she also wasn’t a little girl anymore. Suddenly he needed to sit up.

  “Hey, Terry,” Doc said, stepping through the hatch after Yui had gone down.

  “Yeah?!” Terry blurted, afraid Doc had noticed his condition. Even worse, Terry’s voice cracked. Oh, for the love of...

  “I wanted to wait until Yui went below to ask you something. Did your dad mention anything about the email my friends sent?”

  “The doctor with that mercenary company? Yeah, he did.” Terry was just glad the question wasn’t about what he’d been afraid it would be.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said the last thing mom would want is some mercenary nut job chopping her up.”

  “Did he?” Doc sat down next to Terry and scratched the stubble on his chin. One of the things Doc seemed to enjoy the most about weekends, besides diving of course, was not shaving. “You know the merc doctor used to work for Johns Hopkins? You know what that is?”

  “Yeah,” Terry said. “They’re really
good.” Doc nodded. “Then why did dad say that?”

  “Has he been acting weird?”

  “No.” Terry thought for a second. “I mean, all the stuff he’s been doing at the institute has kept him busy. He’s doing it to afford medical care for mom, too.”

  “Oh? What’s he doing?” Doc listened as Terry talked about all the things he’d seen in his dad’s office, including the confrontation.

  “Yeah,” Doc said, looking down and scratching his chin again. “I saw some of that.”

  “Is there something I can do? Maybe I can talk to Dad.”

  “No,” Doc said, and made a sweeping motion with his hand. “Let it go. Don’t worry about it for now. In fact, don’t even mention it to your dad. Okay?”

  “But, Doc.”

  “No, just drop it.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  Yui came back up with a couple of Cokes and stopped when she saw the looks on their faces. “What did I miss?”

  “Nothing,” Doc said. “I’m going to get a beer. You kids enjoy the Cokes; we’ll have to head back in another hour.” He climbed down to the cabin, leaving them alone.

  “Did you guys have a fight?” Yui asked cautiously.

  “No,” Terry said, taking the offered drink. He looked to see the man was below decks and told her.

  “Oh, wow,” she said, “I wonder why he got so upset?”

  “I’m not sure,” Terry said and shook his head. “Adults are so frustrating.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 13

  Molokai Middle School, Molokai, Hawaii, Earth

  August 28th, 2036

  Monday was a lot of fun at school, especially science. The Hawaii school district had paid to get access to the Galactic Union’s version of the internet, called the GalNet, and the science class spent an entire hour wandering through it. The interface they used, something called the Aethernet, had a built in translator. However, it was slow and seemed to struggle on some things. The teacher, Mr. Finch, kept it to astrophysics, making it mainly a lesson about hyperspace.

  “I know this stuff is mostly math,” Mr. Finch said, pushing his old-fashioned glasses back up onto his nose, “but the basics are pretty fascinating.” The class’s big display showed a graphic representation of hyperspace, strange lines and calculations surrounding an almost comical- appearing ship. “Ships are shunted into another dimension via the stargates and pulled to their destination via their hyperspace navigational computer. It’s apparently very old technology, and little of it is explained. Fascinating.”