Caught on a rocky shoal of phrasing, Robbie might say--
Hannah looked out the window at the last of the mid-fall leaves fluttering in the wind, at the low burnt-gold hills west of the carriage house. She couldn't see Selena and Jim, even from up here on the second floor: off for a ramble, they were, neither of them easy enough in their still-healing skins for the jostles and jolts of long-distance running but getting tougher by the day. Their day off: jobs all 'round, in addition to wrangling the carriage house into decent shape and Hannah's having school, English-Danish bilingual classes for the kids of the U.K. refugee settlement in and about Copenhagen. Jim had found himself another courier job, of all things-- couldn't keep his butt off a bike for trying, Selena had said-- if he hadn't learned his lesson by then, he never would. She herself had gotten settled as a pill-sorter in a city hospital, and she was looking into starting up classes in behavioral psych at university. Jim, partly, perhaps, out of common sense, was turning his sights toward engineering-- if nothing else, he wanted to build bikes, better ones, he and a few other fellas, some from the settlement, some Danish pals they'd picked up, too. As for her, Hannah-- on this October afternoon, she was looking out the panes of a white-frame window and not at the cursor blinking on her e-mail screen.
Writing to the doctors.
Dr. Huelsmann had left her e-mail address when she and Leo had headed for the States-- and to new jobs with oil companies not having compass directions or astronomical bodies in their names. On Hannah's request, she'd been good enough to track down the name of the kindly shack doctor who'd examined Hannah and Selena and Jim at Infinity Base. Hannah was writing to Dr. Main now, on a Macintosh Pismo PowerBook that Robbie had "acquired" for them. It hadn't been theft, no: he was a dab hand with computers, it turned out, was Robbie, and someone had abandoned the machine at the repair shop in which he'd found work. "Soaked to the skin, poor thing," he'd said: the Pismo had sunk with a yacht, right to the bottom of Copenhagen Harbor, and he'd brought it back to life with a good drying out and a thorough cleaning, only to have its rich owners balk at the repair bill. So it went to the carriage house with the repair shop owner's and Robbie and Laurel's blessing, the latter two having already a computer of their own-- if, as yet, no permanent leads on either fair Vikings or Norse gods. Laurel was content, as far as Hannah could tell, with Robbie, even if the Scots sharpshooter and innkeeper extraordinaire would never admit it; she was content, also, to be, as she put it, "moving up the food chain" in a reputable hotel in town. Sights on management, maybe a place of her own. Sort of a "combat hospitality" view of things-- if they never went back to Preneen, that was. Or to England. But the all-clear had yet to come, and, well--
--this was home now, wasn't it?
She had ideas of her own, Hannah did. Helicopters: flying or repair. Or both, Dr. Main would say: why not? Maybe for a private firm. Maybe for the Royal Danish Navy. She'd have to see how her grades kept up. Mrs. Andersen-- Emily-- Aunt Emily, if not Auntie Em (both she and Laurel, Laurel's eternal store of culturally obsolescent media references intact, had vetoed that one)-- provided encouragement there. Selena and Jim, they were Hannah's guardians now, and she loved them, but they'd forever be more her big sister and big brother. It was good to have someone like a mum about. She was what Hannah's dad might have called a "handsome woman," Emily was, not beautiful but possessed of clean strong features and dark hair worn mid-length and brown eyes that seemed lit from inside. She was younger than Captain Andersen by some years, and, yes, she might indeed have worked for the secret service. Something poised about her, something a little mysterious. Something, maybe, about the way she could jump into discussions regarding naval materiel, ships and weapons and maneuvers and such, when Andersen and Piotr, down for a visit, forgot anyone else might be at the dinner table.
But the question at hand-- Hannah couldn't put it off forever-- all this pausing and thought and ignoring of cursors had come from a simple inquiry from Dr. Main, which Hannah had read out to Jim and Selena from the stairs as they put on their jackets an hour back:
"She wants t' know when she can deliver th' baby."
"What's that--?" Selena, lacing a boot.
"Says it's somethin' she's always wanted t' try. Midwifin'."
"Tell her he's not showing yet."
"Right--" Jim spoke, his head and shoulders out of sight as he pulled outerwear from the closet just inside the heavy front door. He leaned out, frowning. "Wait--"
"We discussed it, remember--?" -- as Selena moved on to boot number two: "You're going to have the first one and let me know how it feels. Lesson learned, sweetheart--"
Jim paused with his jacket half on. "Why I should never agree t' anything before, durin', or after sex, right--?"
"Mm hm."
Selena, chuckling, went out the door. Jim grinned and followed.
In the here and now, an hour later, Hannah considered. You'll be waiting a bit on that baby business, Dr. Main, she typed.
XXXXXX
Just later than that, Jim stopped near the end of the day's hike and stood looking down from the autumn-browned rise to the west. The air was clear and cool, wood-scented. The lowering sun cast their shadows ahead of them, down the hill.
"What's that, then--?"
Selena halted beside him. Beyond and below them, on the gravel drive curving down from the main house, a big flatbed lorry was trundling to a halt before the rough white frontside of the carriage house. A tarped large something stood on the lorry's back.
"Looks like a wrecker," she said.
Doors opened on the lorry's cab; two men got out. One was considerably larger than the average fellow. "It's Piotr." Jim took her hand. "Let's go see--"
They went down the hill at an easy lope, neither of them tired or sore. Seeing them, Piotr left off untying the tarp and waved. Still odd it was, seeing him in other than his flight gear. He was wearing jeans, a brown-heather sweater. He smiled as they came crunching onto the gravel drive.
"Hello," he said.
"Hello, handsome." Selena leaned up, kissed his cheek. He blushed a bit.
Jim half-circled the lorry. The second man, a short square fellow in a blue-checked shirt, was unfastening guide chains at the corners of the bed. "What's this then, Piotr?"
"Here--" Piotr threw back the front of the tarp. "Is good, yes?"
Selena and Jim stared up. She nudged him, smiling. "Call Hannah--"
XXXXXX
A hydraulic groaning as the bed lowered, but no Hannah at the window, no Hannah at the door. She could get lost in her schoolwork, that girl. Jim leaned up the stairs: "Hannah, come on down!"
"Whazzit, Jim--?" She looked out from above, confused but not cross. Not knowing, either. Hadn't bothered looking out the window, obviously.
"Come down here." Jim smiled up at her and went back out. Behind him, Hannah's shoes thudded on the heavy wooden steps; she bumped up against him in the doorway; she gasped--
Guided by a chain at its forward axle, a homely black London cab rolled clear of the wrecker.
Hannah stared at it. She smiled, and her eyes filled with tears. She walked up to it and touched its left-hand fender. "How--?"
"I stole a helicopter," Piotr said softly. He went to stand beside her. "Stealing a cab was easy."
The fellow in the blue-checked shirt, the wrecker driver, finished coiling chains and re-folding the tarp. He asked Piotr as the empty wrecker bed cleared the ground: "Anything else, Kalinovich?"
"Thank you, Stefan: no."
"You owe me, then. Goodnight." He nodded 'round to Jim and Selena and Hannah; he got in the lorry and drove off.
Hannah still had her hand on the cab. "Will it run--?"
Piotr nodded. "They tell me it will, yes."
"Want to go for a drive--?"
"Certainly. Only--" He smiled at her, a little shyly. "I was wondering if you could-- you'll have to show me--"
"Show you--" Hannah grinned, incredulous. "You can fly a chopper, an' you can't drive a car--?"
"Yes-- no--" He shrugged hopelessly, grinning back. "No, I can't."
Hannah looked at Jim and Selena, her eyes bright and beseeching. Any sensible guardian would say no: the girl was-- what? Fifteen? The earliest end of sixteen? Years from a license and a guest in another country as well. Wanting to joyride, no less, in a vehicle that had been-- very kindly speaking-- "liberated" from what was as good as a war zone, a no-man's land. Looted, putting it bluntly. No ownership title, no insurance--
"Don't go far, Hannah," Jim said. "It'll be gettin' dark."
"Know where th' headlamps are, don't I?" Hannah smiled at them; she caught Piotr's eye and nodded at the passenger-side door. "Get in, yeah?"
XXXXXX
Tires crunching on gravel, a reliable, tough engine-rumble, a squared black back end and red taillights curving off and out of sight. At a decent speed, at least. Selena said, drily, watching, "We could be deported for this."
"But we won't be," Jim replied. The air above the western hills was glimmering with golden light, and his voice was optimistic in his ears.
She tried-- she tried to look troubled. But a smile touched the corners of her mouth. "I should have told her when to be home--"
"They'll come home when they get hungry." Jim took her hand. His thumb brushed the ring on her third finger. White gold. Plain band, nothing fancy. Matched his, it did. He tipped his head toward the warm interior of the carriage house. "C'mon, darlin'. Let's start dinner."
THE END
