Pegasus In Space

You have arrived. Scarcely have I stopped the engine and you are here. How many minutes, seconds does such a journey take? Then the Delhi Center chief was shaking hands as the passengers emerged into dry and dehydrating heat. I know you, Carmen Stein. Your mind is unmistakable. Lance, it is good to see your face, no longer contorted with the anxieties with which that appalling Barchenka burdened you. And has she not had her just deserts! And who is this? She took a short step backward, throwing her arms wide in a surprise welcome, as Tirla emerged, looking about her in total amazement at the sun-washed plain of Zia Airport.

She's frightened, Carmen said, and smiled reassuringly, holding out her hand to Tirla. She's never been anyplace this open or uninhabited.

Ooh, but she looks like one of us. Kayankira touched her chest with both hands. She brought them together in the formal salute of her part of the world. Almost dazed, Tirla hesitated. In another second, she evidently recovered from culture shock. She folded her hands in front of her chest.

"Namaskar ji," she said in flawless Hindi.

Kayankira's expressive face registered total amazement.

Did you tell her everything about me?

We told her nothing, Kayan, Lance replied with a broad grin.

She gets your language right from your head, ma'am, Peter explained quickly so that the Delhi Center chief would not think badly of his good friend. She doesn't know she does it but it's what she does best.

Ah, the little one I have heard about.

"Namaskar, kya hal he?" Kayankira replied.

"Stick to English, please, Tirla," Lance said. "We all understand that."

Tirla cocked an eyebrow in his direction. "I am fine, thank you," she said to Kayankira very, very politely.

Ah, when she is old enough to be employed, I have first dibs.

Get in line, Carmen said. "Lord but it's roasting out here." She fanned herself with her hand. "I need some shade where I can concentrate on locating. What is the child's name?"

"To the vehicle," Kayankira said, pointing to it and gathering her passengers in the circle of her free arm to herd them toward it. Peter and Lance began shucking their jackets and rolling up their sleeves. Though Tirla was dressed for Jerhattan, too, she strode as if mere climate was not affecting her.

She was glad enough to reach the shade, drink thick sweet coffee, and munch her way through European-style breakfast breads in the Zia passenger terminal. She had eyes only for the fascinating promenade of passersby and their sometimes exotic-looking burdens. Peter was trying to emulate Tirla's composed manner but then she was more accustomed to Neesters from her years in Linear G.

"So, what is the child's name, Lance?" Carmen repeated when she had had a restorative sip of the coffee.

"I don't know. Wasn't it mentioned in the journal?"

"I didn't read it. When I realized that the father was dead, I used the photograph of the child as a focus."

Tirla paused long enough in her surveillance of the terminal to extract Lance's rectangle from her pack and hand it to the finder. Carmen passed it over to Lance who quickly riffled through pages, trying to find personal references.

"Ah, Amariyah?" He stumbled over his pronunciation of the written word, putting the accent on the second syllable.

"AmaREEyah, I would say," Kayankira replied. "Though it is not a common Indian name, neither Muslim or Hindu."

"Nor does it sound Russian, which was the mother's nationality," Lance said.

Peter groaned. Not another shelkoonchik?

"A nutcracker?" Tirla asked, frowning at Peter.

Kayankira's eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets. Russian, too?

Carmen gave a shrug. She can do it with any language.

How does she do it? the Delhi Center chief asked.

As well ask how Peter heaves space shuttles about, Lance said with an equally bemused lift of his shoulders.

"What has a nutcracker to do with Amariyah?" and the name flowed prettily from Tirla's lips.

"Nothing, I believe. But Amariyah is the child we have come to find. Now if you will all be quiet." Carmen put a finger on the face of the child sitting so solemnly between her parents and closed her eyes.

Tirla closed her eyes, too, so she wouldn't inadvertently distract the finder. That was one parapsychic courtesy that she always observed. She was also fond of Carmen, now that she saw the great benefits that had come of Carmen finding her in the first place.

"She's quite a ways from here," Carmen finally said.

"I cannot understand what you could have been thinking!" Sister Kathleen was saying, shaking with frustration and anger. She was holding a dusty Amariyah away from her and the girl, usually so self-effacing and gentle, was trying to twist free, flailing her arms. To go right back to tearing more hair off the scalp of the hysterically weeping Lila, curled up in the wreckage of what everyone in the orphanage knew was Amariyah's garden. All the other girls were ringed about the little tableau, well out of range of either Amariyah's or Sister Kathleen's retribution, staring in round-eyed, openmouthed fascination.