by F. E. Arliss
Johanna sat up in the dirty road. Perspiration ran in rivulets down her face and stained her school uniform. Mistress would be very upset about that if she didn’t get it clean by tomorrow. Tears sprang to her eyes. She was tired and she still needed to get Precious home. Slowly, she started to pull herself to her feet. A slim, well-manicured, white hand, appeared in front of her face. “Let me help you up, young lady. You’ve certainly earned my help and respect,” continued a cultured voice.
Looking up wearily, Johanna glanced up into a slender face topped with shockingly blonde hair and bright blue eyes. They were so bright that even in the gathering darkness she could see their sparkle with the aid of the car lights now gleaming towards them in the gloom. She supposed the man was in his forties, though it was hard to tell with these wealthy guys. They all looked so much the same.
She took her time debating about whether she should take the overly clean hand. Hers would undoubtedly be grimy, sweaty, and grease encrusted. Reluctantly, she took the offered hand. With a slight heave, the man helped her to her feet. Ignoring him, she called over her shoulder, “Mom, are you ok?”
Her mother, climbed from the brush along the road. “Yes, Johanna, I am fine. You scared me so much. Don’t ever do that again,” she cried, and flung herself into Johanna’s arms.
“Well, I agree with your mother,” said the cultured voice behind them. “Please don’t endanger yourself on my behalf again.”
“You’d be dead, and robbed if I hadn’t,” snapped Johanna, exasperated at the adult’s drama. “What sort of idiot comes out after dark without a pistol, or some way to protect themselves?” she snorted in derision. “Where are you from, London?” she asked, rolling her eyes.
“Paris, actually,” the man grinned. “I’ve got my sister boarding at St. Mary’s and was just trying to see her before I return from this business trip.” It appeared he’d taken no insult from her comments, though her mother was anxiously trying to shush her.
“If you live in Paris, why on earth did you put your sister in school at St. Mary’s?” Johanna asked, incredulously. “Don’t you have better schools in France?”
The Frenchman laughed again, this time a bit livelier. “You’re a real firework, aren’t you?” he asked, then answered her question. “Yes, we do have very good schools in France, but Sophie likes the climate here much better and she is a bit sickly. She’s healthier here. Also, St. Mary’s has an excellent international reputation. Which I would have thought you’d know, if your mother works there,” he said with an arch of one white-blonde brow.
“My mother works there,” Johanna said tartly. “We haven’t enquired about the academics.”
He laughed again. “I like you. You’re very feisty for a young lady. I wish my sister had some of your zest. You’d be a good influence. She’s a bit retiring, as my own mother would say.”
“Does she have reason to be?” asked Johanna indignantly. “Mostly people just try to boss young girls around. Men especially,” she said accusingly. “Maybe she’s ‘retiring’ because you intimidate her.”
“Perhaps,” the man said thoughtfully. “Perhaps. For now, let me take you home. It’s the least I can do in return for your help,” he added, appreciatively. “You were pretty amazing, by the way. Like an avenging fairy, come from the evening gloom.”
“You’re a poet now too, I suppose,” snarked back Johanna. Her mother gasped, tugging at her arm frantically in an attempt to curtail Johanna’s tongue. “It’s so late now that if you drove that car into Diepsloot, it would be stripped in a matter of minutes. I’m afraid there would be no way for you to take us all the way home,” she added wearily.
“Please forgive my daughter,” gasped out Precious. “She works in a mechanics garage after school, and they have taught her terrible behaviors.”
“Don’t make excuses for me doing what needed to be done, Mother,” Johanna requested sternly. “My work at the garage has been a boon to both of us, and is the reason I was able to defend us against those men. I will not have it derided.” ‘Derision’ was another word they were having in class this week at the mission school. It seemed to fit this situation perfectly. She hoped she’d used it right.
“Enough, ladies,” broke in the gentleman. “I’m grateful for your help and indeed, delighted, that you learned to do such wonderful things at the garage,” he added, placatingly towards Precious. “Since it is too late to return you to your home, I suggest that you continue back to St. Mary’ s with me for the evening. I will arrange guest quarters for all of us, and we can discuss things more in the morning, after we’ve refreshed ourselves and rested. It’s been a stressful evening.” With that, he gestured towards the car.
Johanna allowed herself to be persuaded to settle onto the back seat of the Mercedes. The man helped her mother into the front seat and drove them back towards the gates of the school.
Fifteen minutes later, they were ushered into guest quarters by the Matron and the gentleman. They’d learned his name was Pierre Roux and his sister was Sophie Roux. He nodded to both of them, “Thank you ladies. Until morning,” then turned and walked to his own room, closing the door.
Matron smiled at them and urged Precious towards the bed, “Sit down before you fall down. I’m having some supper and hot tea sent up. You’ve both had quite an evening. Try to rest,” and with that closed the door on their tired and dirty faces.
After a shower, an untold luxury, they sat eating sandwiches in the tiny guest room. A young girl had brought the sandwiches. Her mother had known the girl, thanking her with a smile and sending the shy student scurrying away. It was so much nicer than their own home in a shack with corrugated metal roof and sides, and cardboard boxes as the interior walls. Johanna couldn’t believe how soft the bed was. How silky feeling the sheets were. It was heaven on earth. She fell asleep and slept the sleep of the truly safe. Deep, uninterrupted and long.
Chapter Four
Turn of Fortune
The next morning Johanna did not wake until almost ten o’clock in the morning. When she finally emerged from the cocoon of covers on what she considered the most sumptuous of beds, her mother was already at work. Precious Van Heusen had had a long talk with Matron and Monsieur Roux, and was trying hard not to think about what they’d discussed.
If she thought about it, her hands shook and she was unable to focus on her work in the laundry. Monsieur Roux was certainly an angel from heaven. Her sweet daughter Johanna’s guardian angel. Monsieur Roux felt it was the other way around. Johanna had been his guardian angel and perhaps would also be the guardian angel of his sister, Sophie.
It was hard for Pierre to imagine that a young girl in the sixth grade could stand up to grown men intent on doing harm. She had. It had been epic, as one of his young assistants at the plant would say. ‘Totally epic!’
Pierre Roux owned a technology company that designed and manufactured all types of wind powered turbines. It was why he was in South Africa. Many of the open spaces in South Africa were perfect locations for turbine farms. The large towers could be interspersed with vines, coffee trees, or cotton fields. It gave land owners a second profitable crop to reap from their open land, and generated energy that they could use to operate their farms. Excess was then sold off to the nearest energy grid for a tidy profit.
He'd discussed his ideas with Matron before approaching Precious Van Heusen. Matron had agreed that it could be a positive influence for Sophie and the plan would benefit Precious and Johanna Van Heusen. She approved wholeheartedly.
When Precious Van Heusen had heard that Monsieur Roux proposed to send Johanna to boarding school here at St. Mary’s School as a companion to his sister Sophie, she had been almost afraid to believe it. When Matron told her that they would also be allowing her to stay in a room with her daughter, as she worked there anyway, it was as though the Heaven’s had opened and trumpets blared. They would be safe. Johanna would be educated. It was a miracle.
Johanna, on the other hand,
wasn’t so certain. What if Sophie Roux didn’t like her. What if she wasn’t smart enough to complete her lessons. She was terrified. Grown men intent on harm hadn’t scared her as much as this.
She and Precious were on their way to meet Sophie Roux and her brother. Johanna wanted to run the other way. Most of the students here were white. She did not fit in here. They were all white and wealthy. The only black students were also from very wealthy families, and usually from countries other than South Africa. Wealthy black South Africans sent their children to boarding schools abroad. Wealthy black Africans from Nigeria and Kenya sent their children to South Africa for boarding school. Everyone always trying to one-up others.
Sophie Roux was nervous. Her brother, Pierre, had told her that he’d brought her a companion to help her with school. While Sophie thought that sounded nice, she wasn’t sure it would turn out that way. Most girls didn’t really like Sophie. She was skinny, wore thick glasses, and was not in the least athletic. Usually, they just made fun of her. What if this girl, Johanna, bullied her? What would she do? It was all very terrifying. She tried to smile stiffly at her brother in an attempt to reassure both of them. It didn’t work.
The door opened and two people entered. One was a pleasant-faced woman that her brother introduced as Precious Van Heusen. Sophie had seen her working around the school. She changed beds and did laundry. She’d always been very kind to Sophie. So, that was good. Sophie relaxed a little.
Behind Precious, was a tall, but slender and slightly hippy young girl in an ill-fitting mission school uniform. She had long, black, wildly bouncy curls that gleamed in the morning sun. She would discover later, that the gleam was due to coconut oil, and that her new friend’s hair always smelled like the beach. It would end up being a very reassuring scent for Sophie.
They were introduced to each other and Matron explained that Sophie was shy. Johanna was not. Matron hoped that they would work together to make their time at St. Mary’s School as productive for one another as possible. The adults left the room and silence reigned.
Johanna approached the slim girl in the heavy glasses and sat down next to her on the plaid settee. “Hi,” she said, offering her hand.
“Hi back,” lisped Sophie.
Ah, thought Johanna, that probably makes her life miserable. People always picked on people who were different in any way. A lisp would just be frosting on the cake.
“What’s your favorite subject?” Johanna offered, in way of a beginning at getting to know each other. “Mine’s physics and chemistry. I want to be an aerospace engineer and work on a ship out in the galaxy exploring.”
“Wow! That’s great! I like art and history,” Sophie replied slowly, trying to enunciate clearly. “I want to be an archeologist or an anthropologist, or maybe a diplomat. Though everyone tells me that I’ve got to not have a lisp to be a diplomat,” she glanced down, apologetically.
“Why?” Johanna asked, serious. “I’m sure other countries and species also have people with speech impediments. One of the kings of Spain had a terrible lisp and all the people in court started talking with a lisp to make him feel better. It changed the way Spanish is spoken in Spain a lot,” she stated emphatically. “So, I don’t see why you can’t be a diplomat just because you have a lisp. If a king can have a lisp, so can you.”
Sophie grinned at her in delighted surprise. “Really, a king had a lisp? Why hasn’t anyone told me that before?” she asked with consternation. “I would have liked to know that!”
“Totally,” Johanna assured her, grinning back. “We’ve got six years here at St. Mary’s,” she added. “I’m sure we can find more famous people who had lisps too. Then we’ll look up black women who changed the world,” she added. Sophie smiled back and gave her a ‘thumbs up’ signal.
After that things went very smoothly. The girls got along well. Sophie helped Johanna catch up in her studies. While the Mission school had been fairly strong in English, the math and sciences were well behind where the other girls at her new school were currently studying. It took every spare moment Johanna had over the next year to get up to speed mathematically. She depended heavily on Sophie’s patient coaching to make the most of her text books.
There were a few altercations where Johanna had to take control of some very ‘not nice’ girls who started bullying Sophie. It didn’t take long for them to learn that Sophie and Johanna were off limits if you wanted to maintain your physical body all in one piece for the semester. Sophie stood a lot straighter. Johanna had better etiquette, cleaner hands, and a more level playing field academically.
Chapter Five
Carlo Bergstrom
Carlo Bergstrom was a very large man. As he strode across the conference room at Orbit Guard Command on Earth, he extended a hand to the scarred Colonel awaiting him. They came eye to eye, so both were about six feet four inches tall if Major Donji, who had ushered the new Major into the room for his conference with Colonel Reinegaard, was accurate. But where the Colonel was a muscled hulk of chiseled muscle and a blonde Adonis beneath his horrible scarred face and neck, the new Major was a bear-like mass of curly-haired heartiness. While the Colonel had a tucked in waist and long legs, Major Bergstrom was a solid-muscled slab from shoulder to thigh. He had a long torso and shorter, tree-trunk like legs. Even from a distance, he looked formidable.
The Colonel had had a number of meetings with candidates for the position of Major, commanding the Tiger Guard, on the Orbit Guard’s Frontier Station. He’d see how this interview stacked up with the others.
What Major Bergstrom lacked in what others considered ‘standard’ good -looks, he made up for with an outgoing personality and considerable bluff charm. He boomed out a greeting, met Colonel Reinegaard’s firm handshake with one paw-like crushing squeeze and an enormous boyish grin. An hour later when he left the Colonel’s office, they both felt good about the interview for the position of Major of Tiger Guard on Frontier Station. They’d be replacing a traitor, so the situation was fraught with mistrust from the squad and other officers. Carlo’s outgoing personality would help immensely with that part of the transition.
Colonel Reinegaard’s only worry was that the Major didn’t have much experience dealing with female recruits, and might interact with the new women Corpsmen in a way that they wouldn’t like. Well, Chloe’d get that worked out quickly, the Colonel thought with a quirk of his scarred mouth, as he thought about his feisty and beautiful fiancé.
Major Bergstrom found his temporary quarters and heaved his bulk gratefully onto the folded down bunk. Hopefully, he’d get the new squad leader position on the Frontier Station. It was what he’d been working toward his whole career.
He was worried about interacting with the female Corpsmen. He’d never had much success with communicating with women. They were always terrified of him, or trying to use him. He heaved a sigh and hoped to God that they would cut him some slack. From the Colonel’s description of most of them, that wouldn’t be happening any time soon. It put a bit of a damper on his good spirits and caused a frown to grace his usually jovial face. If he got the command, he reminded himself. It would be several months before he’d know.
If he did get the position, maybe he could find one of the group that was more open to communicating with him and help him understand how to proceed. He’d keep an eye out for one of the Corpsmen who seemed more comfortable around him and see if he could enlist her help.
He’d entered the Guard a decade ago to escape the tension in his refined and elegantly condescending family. His father was German and his mother was Italian. Both his brothers took after the Italian side of the family and were slender, sophisticated businessmen who ran the family’s vineyard with grace and style. Carlo took after the German side of the family, not that that endeared him to his father.
His colossus of a frame just seemed to embarrass everyone but his mother, who loved him dearly and frequently told him how handsome and attractive he was. He supposed his brown eyes and brown cur
ly hair had some boyish charm. The huge muscled bulk of his frame didn’t really coincide with the ‘boyish’ part.
His mother had let him go to pursue a career in Orbit Guard, not because she wanted to, but because she knew he’d have a better life there. He didn’t need any tension in his new family of Orbit Guard. He hoped it worked out.
Chapter Six
MINES and Americans
Johanna Van Heusen and Sophie Roux were sitting on the terrace of Sophie’s family home outside Paris. It had been a short six years here in Paris for both of them. The six years at St. Mary’s School in Pretoria had seemed to drag on forever. The small world of a girl’s school hadn’t had enough stimulation for either of them after a while. Matron had given Johanna the leeway to go into Pretoria and work at an airport maintenance bay three afternoons a week.
Sophie had worked at a nearby cultural studies center during the same afternoons. Then they’d both ride home together in the school’s van that came to pick them up and make sure they got transported safely.
Safety was always on everyone’s mind in South Africa. Crime was still on the rise, and over the past six years had gotten no better. Both girls had been given extra-curricular defense and martial arts training at the insistence of Sophie’s brother Pierre. He didn’t want them to ever be helpless again, not that Johanna had been helpless to begin with! He knew what that felt like, and had taken himself off for lessons upon his return from Paris all those years ago.
Now the girls were waiting his return so that they could celebrate their respective graduations from advanced degree programs. Sophie had attended American University in Paris in the International Relations undergrad degree program, and then gone on to the American Graduate School of Paris for a Master’s in Universal Relations. They had to upgrade it to Universal, now that there were alien species discovered in the outer frontiers of space. It was all very exciting to Sophie.
