Games

The little parade of musketeers and guest arrived in a courtyard. Practicing cadets were sparring in pairs; most had shed their jackets in response to the afternoon sun and their hard workout. Lauren, in the oversized grey coat borrowed from d'Artagnan, watched them with interest, and they returned the favor, staring back at her. This amused by a woman in their precious garrison? They should take a second look at Jacques. Before anyone could try and help her, Lauren did a vaulting scissor-kick dismount, landing with catlike grace on her feet. She flashed a flirtatious smile at her audience and made a little bow. Siroc cleared his throat. "I'll take her to my workshop."

Ramon took the blonde's horse's reins without a question. "D'Artagnan, here," Jacques said, offering her horse to the other musketeer. D'Artagnan raised a questioning eyebrow but accepted the reins after a sharp glare from the woman.

Lauren allowed them to steer her through the group of overly friendly musketeers towards an open doorway. She called out 'bonjour!' as she passed each man. Her two escorts ducked inside, and led her through a series of rooms into a laboratory. She looked around in amazement at the unlabeled jars of different mixes and poked at the bits and pieces of inventions covering all the flat surfaces in the room.

Siroc looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown. "Please, don't—" he called as Lauren played with a model of a primitive flying machine.

"Sorry!" she replied, setting it carefully back on its stand. Siroc let out a breath of relief.

Jacques turned to speak with him. "Why don't you go get the Captain and explain the situation? I'll watch her," the disguised woman offered.

"And you won't let her touch anything?" he asked, sound anxious. He ran a hand through his hair and looked at Lauren suspiciously.

Jacques smiled. "Everything will be just fine; go get Duval." One last glance and Siroc had left. Jacques closed the door. "Look, I don't know who you are, but breathe a word about me to anyone and I'll—"

"Don't worry about it," Lauren broke in. "I won't tell a soul. And I'm sure whatever you were going to say would hurt really badly, so just relax; your secret's safe with me."

Jacques recovered quickly. She's pretty levelheaded, Lauren thought. I like her.

"So what's your story?" the musketeer asked, sidling over. "You really believe you are from America?"

"Of course I am, and proud of it!" Lauren stuck out her chest and stood at attention. "Home of the free, land of the brave, apple pies, baseball, and all that jazz."

Jacques' brow furrowed. Lauren was about to continue when the door opened. A grey haired man with a limp walked in shadowed by Siroc. "Leponte," the older man nodded at Jacques before he saw Lauren. "Good God!" he practically shouted. "She's been wandering around Paris like that!"

Lauren looked down self-consciously; her clothes were a bit dirty, sure, but they were of good enough quality. Her cheek was still scraped up, and her head and shoulder hurt, but she was not a bloody mess either. "Excuse me?"

"Find her a proper dress before she whips the whole garrison into a frenzy," he ordered to Siroc. The blonde turned obediently to follow the command.

"No."

"No?" the captain repeated, incredulously. Lauren, emboldened, took a few steps to face him down.

"If you want me to wear a dress, then he'll have to put it on me himself." She gestured to Siroc whose jaw dropped to the floor.

Duval shook with rage; a blood vessel threatened to pop in his forehead. "I'll put you—"

"Sir," Siroc broke in, stepping in between the Captain and Lauren, "she's wrong in the mind. If you give me the chance, I can help her. Satisfy this whim—it won't hurt anything, and perhaps I can persuade her to change her mind… eventually."

The Captain reverted into imperturbable commander mode. "Find her a small uniform to wear, for God's sake. Anything's better than that!" He glanced at Lauren again. "Better make that extra small." With a shake of his head, Duval left muttering 'women in the garrison' under his breath.

Lauren sighed and sank onto a bench. Now I have to deal with a chauvinist Captain besides these crazies. Shaking herself out of a slump, she reprimanded herself, Stop whining and work! You can change their minds. Do your feminist sisters proud! She faced her captors with a refreshed new strength.

Jacques announced to no one in particular, "I'll get her a uniform," and left the room. Siroc was left standing alone seeming very apprehensive.

"Would you allow me to check your wounds now?" he asked softly. Lauren considered for a moment and nodded. What harm could a check up do?

He pulled some of the jars off of the shelves and grabbed a few clean bandages. At least he's an intelligent doctor, Lauren surmised as she hopped up on the table, sitting on the edge like he had indicated. He set his equipment next to her and held up a jar of a light brown paste. "May I?"

Lauren looked at it suspiciously. "I suppose you wouldn't know if it caused cancer in lab rats, would you?" she asked. His confused look confirmed the obvious. "Hell for it—go ahead." Siroc dabbed the herbal smelling paste on her cheek.

When he finished, he put the jar back in its place. He returned to Lauren and looked right into her eyes. "Can I check your skull for fractures?"

"If you must," she sighed. Lauren tilted her head forward and let him run his fingers tenderly over her scalp; she was reminded of having a stylist wash her hair before cutting it. The gentle massage did wonders for her headache.

The door flew open to admit d'Artagnan and Ramon, back from the stables. Siroc pulled away abruptly. "What took so long?" he asked quickly.

D'Artagnan looked curiously between the two, and Lauren raised her eyebrows at him. What on earth is going through that mind of his… "We had to explain her to all of the cadets."

"Don't I feel special," Lauren remarked casually. She tried to sit up straight and stretch out her shoulders but hissed as a bolt of pain coursed her side.

Ramon rushed over. "Let me help—I give wonderful back rubs." He placed his hands on her shoulders.

"Hands off—Captain's orders," came Jacques' voice from the doorway. Her arms were full of the smallest Musketeer uniforms she could find. She dumped them on a chair by the door and strode in to join the group.

Lauren was a tad annoyed. I am capable of deciding who I want to touch me, Captain's orders or no! "Maybe later, Ramon. I should change first." She shot a defiant look at Jacques before standing to retrieve her clothes.

"Where can I put these on?" she asked, mostly at Siroc.

He looked around, eyes settling on a door out of his workshop. "You can stay in the adjoining room. I hardly use it anyway." He shook the doorknob, and it swung open on rusted hinges. Inside, a shelf full of dusty books, a cot, and a dirty window were the only decorations.

"I can see why…" Lauren muttered. "Thanks," she said more loudly, closing the door in his face. She shook out a pair of standard Musketeer issue pants. Here goes nothing…

Proofs

Lauren stared across the table at Siroc. It was late afternoon in France, and she was ready for a siesta in her dusty room on the lumpy cot. The inventor sat directly before her, notebook open, poised to write. Lauren yawned.

"Can you tell me your name?" he asked, beginning his life of questioning. Flashback to that therapist I had to see during my physical last year, Lauren thought.

"Lauren Cantre."

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"Where are you from?"

"Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It's in America."

His brow furrowed slightly as he recorded her answers. "Tell me about your home."

Lauren snorted. "It's the place I sleep, eat, and work."

Siroc did not get angry. "What sort of schooling do you have?"

"I should be enjoying my senior year of high school and going to some university next year, but I'm stuck in la-la land right now." She looked around boredly and noticed some equations scribbled on a board across the room. "Are you a fan of Pierre de Fermat or something?"

He looked up from his book sharply. "You know of Fermat?"

"Of course I do." Lauren stood to stretch her legs and ambled over to the board. "We study mathematicians in calculus. This is Fermat's great theorem, the generalization from the Pythagorean theorem, right?"

"Yes," Siroc answered, abandoning his notebook to stand beside her. He frowned up at his work. "Fermat just neglected to leave a proof." He picked a book up and turned to a particular page. "This is all I have to work with."

Lauren squinted at the old time script and struggled to pick out the words.

Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadrato-quadratum in duos quadrato-quadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exigitas non caperet.

"Sorry, I took French, not Latin. Could you translate, please?" she asked sweetly.

Siroc was too distracted to notice her tone. "Roughly it says: 'It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.' It's quite a fascinating assumption, but I don't know how he could have proved it."

"Don't worry too much about it. It isn't proved until 1995, and most of the top mathematicians don't even understand those two hundred pages of proof. I just know it as, 'There are no positive integers x, y, and z such that xn + yn zn in which n is a natural number greater than two,'" Lauren recited, just as she had written it on the exam.

Siroc looked down and seemed shocked to realize that she was there. "How do you know all this?"

"I told you. I took a year of AP Calculus—or rather I am taking it," she told him.

"What else do you study?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against a table.

"This year I just have calculus, government and economics, French, English, and art history. I was taking anatomy, but I decided that dissecting a cat wasn't for me." Lauren wrinkled her nose at the last part. "Besides, none of my friends were in that class either."

Only slightly confused by her language, Siroc pressed her further. "So you study math, science, government, history, and languages, dress and ride like a man, and wander strange places alone?"

"So it would seem," she answered back sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "Thank you for stating the obvious."

"Why do you reject being a woman?" he asked hesitantly. "Why won't you wear a dress?"

"I don't reject anything," Lauren said plainly, looking him right in the eye. "I live in a different time where women have rights and choices. We have every opportunity to learn and dress as we please, and we do it better than the boys most of the time." She stood up proudly. "As for not wearing a dress, a skirt to me is like shackles to a slave—a symbol of past oppression of my people, women," she said sincerely. "It gives me the feeling of vulnerability and weakness. You can't ask me to feel like that."

Lauren could not fully describe the look on Siroc's face. It was as though a fresh new wave of thought was trying to settle into his mind. A look of recognition crossed his face, like he sympathized with what she had said. "You're not like most girls are you?"

Lauren broke into a smile. "No, fortunately." I turned one of them around, she thought with pleasure.