Dee Dee: A Mutant

By Gordon Kearns

Part 1 - Karcher's Keep

John Karcher, his back to the cockpit (what everyone called his electronics-loaded desk), looked out the massive. single pane window wall of his office to survey the shadows of dusk swallowing his beloved Black Hills. He wasn't excited - John Karcher was never excited - but content was written in his charismatically expressive features. This was his first day home in three months (such was the lot of the movers and shakers of the world for whom life is a constant reshaping of priorities). But The Keep was what he called home, the only place he trusted to house his most private papers . . . and his adopted daughter Dee Dee, who at the moment was swimming nude (as she always did) in the indoor Olympic-sized swimming pool housed on the fourth level of his castle. She was 12 now, and her budding breasts were no longer the formless little buttons of childhood. Dee Dee had matured much since she was nine. She had become a young lady in the intervening years. He'd checked with Linda, Dee Dee's nanny. The girl hadn't reached menarche yet, but by all signs it wouldn't be long. He figured it was getting close; that's why he decided to come home oftener now. He wanted to be on hand when his well-paid attending doctors gave the okay for the next, and most important phase in Karcher's master plan for his industrial domain. So behind the cockpit, as Karcher was relaxing contentedly in his form-fit swivel chair, savoring the dusk falling on his Black Hills, he could see the dawn of a new era ahead - a new era plotted out three years earlier when nine year old Dee Dee was signed, sealed, and delivered into his custody. A few minutes later he'd returned the thick file marked Project Dee Dee to his private briefcase, dropped the briefcase into a drawer in The Cockpit, and headed for the pool and Dee Dee.

One of the running jokes of closet wiseacre lower-level employees was the reference to John Karcher and his executive assistant Al Staples as the Mutt and Jeff bosses of Karcher Industries. The pairing of the two leaders of such different physical characteristics was no accident. At 6-10, Karcher was a rangy giant. Staples, at 5-9, was built like a tree stump. Both were excellent athletes, and their tennis matches were legend on the grass surface tennis courts of Karcher's many estates. The running score was generally balanced, with Staples making sure his total of victories was always fewer than the boss's. Karcher wanted it this way. His exec had to be a close match for himself - but not better. But about their contrasting heights: Karcher would never have anyone on the executive level of any of the company divisions taller than himself. However, his actually being so tall left plenty of leeway for his selections. Since he had to be seen so much in the company of his exec, choosing one so markedly shorter left no doubt about who was boss. Ironically, Karcher's soft round features appeared friendlier and gentler than Staples' tough-looking square-jawed countenance, with those menacing thick black eyebrows dominating the rest of his features. But those in the know considered Staples the more likely to be understanding of human frailty.

Dee Dee did not come running to give him a welcoming hug. She was doing casual backstroke laps when she saw him standing on the pool's patio deck. She flipped over, free-stroked to the end of the pool, climbed the ladder and stood facing her foster father. She seemed totally indifferent to being so immodestly naked in front of the man she saw so seldom, but who was her only legal family these days. She knew quite well what he was interested in from her, and sexual stimulation wasn't it. When she started to turn to leave, Karcher said, "Wait! I want to look at you a bit longer." So she stood patiently as he slowly circled her. Generally, she tended to be a bit shorter than average for her age, and slight of build; but when she was standing nude like this, her straight-across shoulders along with the firm muscles of her upper arms, legs, and calves belied any snap judgment that she might be a cream puff among her peers. Now he bent a little closer to study her mons. "Just as I thought: wisps of public hair." He straightened up and turned to his exec secretary Al Staples. "Any day now, I should say. From the looks of things she's almost there. What do you think, Al?"

Staples nodded. "Maybe so, Mr.Karcher," he said too softly to pretend disinterest.

Karcher looked back at Dee Dee. "You can go. I'm finished for now," he said.

She turned away from him and walked to the elevator to return her to her quarters high in the south tower of the Keep. He thought she'd briefly met eyes with his exec secretary, Al Staples. Why not? John thought. Al was the girl's de facto guardian; she knew Staples much better than him. Staples flew back every few days to check personally on Dee Dee's progress, to see to important decisions, to make sure her records were up-to-date and in good order, and to make decisions concerning her physical well-being. That was fine with John. He had no interest in any personal relationship with the girl, his project. She would serve her purpose, and one day - far in the future - she'd sit on the central board of Karcher Industries. But for now, she was daughter in a legal sense only. Indeed, if the signs are right, someday soon, probably within the next year to year and a half - she'll provide the egg and her genetic structure for his pre-designed child. That was the plan from the beginning . . . Part Two of the plan. Part One was the re-construction of the girl herself.

How neatly his detailed scenario had fallen into place back then. It had to. John Karcher was an expert at people. In his whole life he had never made a mistake in judging another human. There was no gamble to it. He knew how to approach the O'Neals. He understood them inside and out - better than they understood themselves. He knew precisely the strings to pull. He was a brilliant executive, but make no mistake, under his friendly mien he was one of the most ruthless men alive. His morality was Karcher Industries, its welfare, survival, and future certainty.

*****

Everett O'Neal was the best physicist/engineer on the staff of the component division of Karcher Electronics, a subdivision of Karcher Industries. Unquestionably, O'Neal was among the most brilliant mathematical minds in the country. And Wilma, his wife, who worked with him, was almost his match. The presence of such talents rising in a corporate division came to Karcher's attention early in their employ. He was always plumbing for capable minds to lead the way in Karcher's growth.

All professional employees had to take intensive intelligence, skill, and personality tests before being hired. And any employee who was a candidate for the highest echelons of the company - those who would be interfacing with Karcher himself - had to submit to even more intensive tests - and exhaustive interviews - for themselves and every member of their immediate families. They were observed in microscopic detail; there was nothing of them or any in their immediate family that wasn't in the book presented to Karcher for his consideration.

Karcher had Staples arrange for one of Karcher Industries' famous staff picnics at Camelot, his colorful estate in the Poconos. An invitation to one of these exclusive gatherings was the dream of every ambitious employee working anyplace in the industries. It meant a "move up" was almost certain. When they received theirs - hand delivered, naturally - Everett and Wilma O'Neal were in Seventh Heaven. Their four kids were scrubbed, coiffed, and designer-dressed for the supposedly casual occasion.

Ah, the O'Neal clan, Karcher had mused in the silence of the darkening hills. What a delightful and rewarding group. And a picture-perfect family to represent Karcher Industries. The tall, lean Aryan blondes reeked strength and intelligence.

Everett and Wilma O'Neal met and married while undergraduates at MIT. They were a dedicated pair, working as valuable part-time assistants to earn enough to keep their growing little family financially above water in the lean years of their long march to inevitable doctors' degrees in Physics. By their own accounts, Dee Dee was their only mistake. She came after they'd secured their positions at Karcher Electronics. They had always planned for the perfect family of exactly three children.

Dee Dee hadn't followed the pattern of her older brothers. The O'Neals affectionately referred to her as their little mutant. The boys were chips off their parents' blocks. To start with, they were exemplars of the family trait of light, almost white blond hair. That's "family trait" on both parents' sides. Dee Dee was a brunette. She was certainly a pretty brunette, with long and full wavy hair and bangs, and dark brown eyes under full, perfectly drawn child eyebrows. Her more or less wide mouth and relatively full lips could open into a warm smile, though ordinarily her expression projected an undefinable sadness. The pretty brunette was very much a sore thumb in any family gathering. But more important was her not possessing the higher family trait of overpowering intellect. The boys took to their proud parents' mathematics tutoring from their infancy. Excellent students every one. Outstanding analytical minds. Everett and Wilma had no doubt about the boys' someday surpassing their own impressive achievements at Karcher. But their dear little mutant Dee Dee was another story. Oh, she was bright enough, but in a dreamy, other-worldly way. In school she did fine in math - how could she not have learned tons from the company of her brainy family - by osmosis, if nothing else. But her interest wasn't in concrete intellectual practice. Dee Dee had that hard-to-define artistic bent. From early-on she loved to play with colors - paints, papers, crayons, pastels, and such (at ages her brothers had played with telescopes and petri dishes). And her first attempts at printing were simple little rhymes. Lord above, the poor child was a poet! As she grew older, while she still liked to pen verses, she took to story-writing and, heaven forbid, dramatics. The only competitions she ever entered were for plum roles in school plays. Her brothers had developed prodigious athletic skills in basketball, soccer, and tennis. She was strong and wiry enough, but she shunned such heavy team play. She loved her gymnastics (her parents were happy to accommodate her - at least it was some kind of physical-mental challenge - even if the girl's interest was in the beauty of the positional flow rather than the competitive aspect). Yes indeed, Dee Dee was a frustration for Wilma and Everett. But a lovely one. A sweet one. There's no way she'd reach the mental heights of her parents or siblings, but if they tailored her schools and the company she kept, someday she'd certainly attract the eyes of some brainy suitor who would fit into the family's way of life. All in all, Everett and Wilma adored their little mutant, as did her older brothers, who took pride in being her protectors from all worldly harm.

Dee Dee was nine years old that fateful weekend the family attended Mr. Karcher's picnic at his Pocono estate.

*****

Part 2 - The Proposal

Visitors loved Camelot. It was a fantasy castle designed to delight guests - old and young. It's message was fun. It had all the usual attractions of such places: expansive fields, English garden mazes, a full stable of docile horses for guided treks into the surrounding woods and hills, tennis courts, 18-hole golf course, Olympic swimming pool (all his estates boasted such a pool someplace on the grounds), and even a mini-theme park with rides for the kiddies. The great dining room was as you've seen in countless movies, with banners hanging from the ceilings and knights' shields lining the walls.

It was on Sunday morning, the second day of the corporate picnic, that John Karcher had the O'Neal family ushered into the board room. Here the Camelot theme departed. This board room was the exact duplicate of the company's board rooms all over the world, including its headquarters office in New York City. No round table here, but an all-business polished mahogany oblong with an unmistakable head-of-the-table throne-like seat for Karcher. But there was powerful symbolism in Karcher's bringing the family here for the big discussion. They were being included in matters of great importance, sharing a major decision with Karcher himself. The message was unmistakable. There was no room for petty issues clouding the primary purposes of a board meeting. The O'Neals were well aware that what happened here was to be well above personal wants and emotions. Only big business took place in a Karcher Industries board room.

Karcher took his position at the head of the table, flanked on his left by Wilma and on his right by Everett - another symbolic gesture that eliminated private communication between the two. The older boys came next, the oldest, Mark, by his father, and Chip, the younger of the two, by his mother. Ten year old Brian sat last on his mother's side, Dee Dee last on her father's side, a deliberate separation of mother and daughter.

An extended period of small talk ensued. John Karcher was a master of small talk. In spite of the stereotyped image of hard, tough, no-nonsense leaders of industry, Karcher, one of the real-life world's most influential leaders, was charm personified. He often preached to his executives that confrontation accomplished nothing of value. Everyone taking part in a discussion should feel deeply invested in its outcome. Karcher did all his manipulation before the fact, in choosing the participants and knowing how they would deal with the question before even they did. Thus, a feeling of friendly comradery filled the O'Neals: man, woman, and children - except Dee Dee. Dee Dee was a watcher. From the moment she was born, she watched the people coming and going from her life, committing little of herself in the process. She was curious about people, and now about this Mr. Karcher, whose eyes always managed to return to her, no matter who he was attending to in the lively discussion. And as the conversation continued, and as Karcher's eyes over and over met hers, Dee Dee came to the realization that whatever they were saying now, in the end, this meeting was going to be about her. And when she came to that realization, something must have shown in her countenance, because at that moment with his eyes fastened to hers, he smiled, nodding his head in confirmation of her insight. So it was a matter of no surprise to the girl when a few minutes later Mr. Karcher finally came to the point of the meeting.

"Ev, Wilma," Karcher said in tones obviously meant to bring the meeting to a focus, "Here's the deal. I've been following your progress for some time now, and I've come to the conclusion that you two are the most brilliant physicists in my employ." He smiled and raised a friendly restraining hand to cut off their modest protestations. "And too under-exploited in your present positions. The company needs your scientific skill in positions where your work can better effect breakthroughs to maintain our leadership in this super competitive world. As you know, in our electronics division we've been doing some extensive research in quantum chip technology. I've read the impressive paper you wrote together on the subject."

Everett and Wilma shifted uncomfortably, but smiled in eager anticipation under this complimentary assault.

"So this is what's going to happen," Karcher continued. "We are upgrading the quantum project to division status of its own because it cuts across almost all areas under the Karcher Industries umbrella. As such, it will operate as a practical laboratory serving the whole company, rather than being a commercial entity in itself." He paused, smiling, for effect. The O'Neals were almost panting in anticipation. "And you two, Everett and Wilma O'Neal, will head up the division. Since marketing and profit margins aren't involved, there will be no need for a board to share your leadership. Instead, you will be responsible directly to me. In effect, you will have the authority to determine the directions the division takes, and more important, to decide and guide the most appropriate projects to fulfill those directions."

The nonplused couple was almost speechless, stammering unfinished questions: "Wh-when; wh-what . . . " The boys sat open-mouthed, trying to wring some meaning for themselves from what Karcher was saying. Dee Dee waited.

Karcher picked out the question start that suited his purposes. "When? Well, in our business time is of the essence. That's a given. Each day our research waits is a day of opportunity for our competitors. So the answer is, Now. The sooner the better. I'd say you two should already be in position and diving into structuring and gathering your organization by next Sunday at this time." Pause for effect. "Of course, you know that our quantum project r&d labs as they now stand are enclaved in northern Maine, near Roosevelt's Campobello. Isolated, of course, for security. Right now they're ensconced on a thousand acre site. One of your first tasks will be planning the required expansion - more buildings, etc. You'll need to gather a cadre of experts to help with the design and equipment requirements." He chuckled. "I bet even as I'm talking, you're minds are spinning ahead making tentative general plans."

Everett and Wilma relaxed some and laughed. "Right," Everett said. "Eager-beavers - like little kids."

Karcher turned a bit more serious. "No, not like kids. I expected you to start weighing in on the problems even as I talked. You have thorough scientific minds, that's what makes you so good. That's why I know the new division is in good hands."

Another pause as he drummed his fingers lightly on the table. "It'll be a community, you know. Fact is, there's a small village on the grounds right now for the employees. But a dramatic expansion will be called for. One of your first tasks will be to organize the establishment of Quantum City - police, fire department, etc., etc.; and getting the contractors busy building homes, government offices, and infrastructure." A smile. "Your boys should eat this up. I know what great students they are. Part of your job, Ev and Wilma, will be convincing your sons to set their sights on Karcher Industries for a permanent career. We'll have need for minds like theirs far into the future." Gathering a thought. "We'll have to get them started in new schools. There are two or three private academies in Maine that would meet the challenge. Graduates go on to MIT, Cal Tech, and all the other most prestigious tech universities in the world. For later on your boys might think about Eton or some such English school that caters to brilliant minds. Anyway, for now we'd have helicopters available for them to commute to their new schools in style. By the way, getting a good private school system set up in the enclave will have to be a priority as you begin pulling in your professional staff at all levels. The kind of kids populating Quantum City need schools tailored for the unique needs of their supercharged minds."

The O'Neals set about chattering among themselves. The boys had suddenly become quite animated what with their being included as key elements in the day's discussion. As with their parents, their quick minds were leaping forward at the possibilities opening for them. Dee Dee was silent. But she smiled. The time had come. Again, Karcher nodded his knowing that she knew.

Karcher sat back and allowed the now almost frenetic tornado of plans. Then, another smile at the girl, and clasping his hands on the table, speaking in a voice calculated to be a decibel under the buzz of conversation ("under" requires an automatic effort to listen that "over" has to wait upon for), he came to the real point of the meeting (as far as he and Dee Dee were concerned): "There is one critical item we need to tackle before we stray too far from the here and now."

All conversation stopped, and all eyes were on the master.

"Your little mutant: I think that's how you affectionately refer to the astute young lady sitting quietly in our presence."

"Dee Dee?" Everett asked. "A critical item? I-I don't understand."

"Certainly," Karcher answered. "There's no way she'd be happy in a community as intellectually charged as Quantum City."

Wilma: "But our Dee Dee . . ."

Karcher: "I'm not verbalizing anything you two haven't been thinking about the girl for years. She hardly fits into your own family."

Everett: "But we love our little . . ."

Karcher: "Doll? Pet?" He leaned forward. "Think about it, folks, have you ever really been able to communicate with your 'Little Dee Dee?'"

The O'Neals weren't anybody's dummies. Their faces turned red with the embarrassment of facing this truth about their relationship with their daughter. They watched nervously as Karcher pulled a manila folder from the personal briefcase sitting by his chair.

Karcher: "Without going into details, you've always been sad that the girl wasn't fulfilling the family's intellectual potential."

The O'Neals waited tensely for Karcher to state his case. To their credit, their powerful minds were already formulating rebuttals, even as they were chilled by the feeling their bright new future might be sliding out of reach. They'd surely be able to find a way of life for their precious little girl in their new society of mental giants. But even before Karcher would start his case, each began filling with guilt that their joy might be bought at the expense of their daughter's right to happiness. And mixed with the unspeakable frustration that she'd be the cause for their not achieving happiness for themselves.

Karcher: "But I think you need to know something about your daughter that never occurred to you to in your concerns about her fitting in." He opened the folder to the first page - obviously already prepared. "The summary of results of the battery of tests our psychologists administered to the girl at the time you were entering the executive level of Karcher Industries; similar to the tests given the whole family at the time."

Another pause.

Karcher, looking up from the paper: "Dee Dee O'Neal undoubtedly has one of the most phenomenal intellects we've encountered in all the years of our testing program. Indeed, the experts giving and analyzing the results were as one in concluding she has unbounded potential. While for obvious reasons they disliked using the term "genius," they agreed if there were such a real life classification, it wouldn't be an altogether inappropriate description of the mind of your girl child. She may indeed be, as you've been saying, a mutant . . . but on a level you never imagined."

Nine year old Dee Dee still sat smiling stoically.

Karcher pressed on: "But it's a mind that lacks discipline. That's why you never noticed her talent. She tends to lean on the right side of her brain, so to speak. Her little essays and poems, the significance of which you've always minimized because of their obvious mechanical deficiencies, have profound meanings. That's what I meant about her need for mental discipline. She needs to learn to organize her thinking process, to capitalize on all her strengths - in a word - to balance her right brain with her left. The community of scientists and engineers and their families that will soon engulf you are, in a way, left-brain savants. There's no way they'd ever appreciate her intuitive assessment of challenges. And of people, by the way. That's why I wanted her included in this meeting. That genius intuitive sense of hers represents a pot of gold for our company. But it needs discipline - control. She hungers for mental challenge . . . organized mental challenge, on a level you'd find impossible to provide even in such a community as Quantum City. If you want to be cruel to your child, hold onto her; you'll never provide her the depth, breadth, and expertly structured environment best suited for her."

A frightening pause before the hammer dropped. "If you want to do right by your sweet little mutant . . ." Another pause . . . "You have to let her go."

Tears were forming in Wilma's eyes. Everett's hands were visibly shaking.

Karcher: "Here's my proposal. Give Dee Dee O'Neal to me. Lock, stock, and barrel. I've already completed all the requisites for legal adoption. I'll give her a home in my most beloved estate. She'll want for nothing. An army of tutors will take over her education. Full time, all the time. The most respected experts in their fields. She'll have a seven day a week schedule. Weekends and vacations are devastating to the smooth flow of learning. Not to worry, though: the expert tutors have been thoroughly screened. Not only for their skill and knowledge, but for their kindly, gentle attitude towards kids. All are parents themselves. Intimidation of any kind will be outlawed. Even though her educational program will be sunup to sundown seven days a week, she will have sufficient free time between sessions to make up for lost weekends and vacations. During those periods she'll be free to roam and play anyplace on the grounds.

"In addition, she'll not lack for that all-important ingredient in the growth of a healthy child: love. I discovered a gem in our own employ - in a day nursery for employees' kids at the headquarters office. Earth mother incarnate. She hugs and loves and supports and dotes on her charges, and would fight to the death defending them against harm. She's no rocket scientist. But for love, Dee Dee doesn't require rocket science; however, Dee Dee might need someone to kiss her forehead and tuck her in at night, and to say all those neat things an earth mother says when a child is hurt - inside or out. This woman will live in Dee Dee's apartment day and night. I guarantee if any of her tutors don't do right by the girl, that woman will have their ears."

Dee Dee's smile grew more natural, something her parents didn't fail to notice. Guiltily they admitted to themselves that earth-mothering was never their forte.

Across the table Everett and Wilma's sad eyes met. The decision had been made. These two scientists knew giving up their little girl was the logical thing to do for her.

Karcher thought to himself, I knew what these devoted scientists would do - what they had to do. Logic is their morality. Offer the right incentive; infuse a measure of guilt and inadequacy; and throw in an unyielding time pressure. Defeated by their own morality, they accede to an act that defies their natural human instinct.

"When?" asked Wilma.

The cold water treatment. "Now," Karcher said emphatically. "To put it off would only be unnecessary torture for the child - and you."

Wilma: "Her things . . . ?"

Karcher: "Staples will send somebody with you. By the way, he'll be the one to make all important decisions for Dee Dee - educational and personal. There's no need to send clothes. She has a full wardrobe of really stylish toggery waiting at the estate. And all the toys and games she'll need in a lifetime. But there might be her personal stuff - a Blanky or stuffed animal, maybe. Or a precious toy . . ."

For the first time in the discussion Dee Dee spoke up: "No. There's nothing I want. I'm ready."

Karcher: "Then I'll let you all alone for a few minutes to say your goodbye's. Just a few minutes, though. The kindest thing for all concerned is to make the break quickly."

Dee Dee was hugged and squeezed by each member of her family in turn. Her mother wept openly. "It all happened so fast. So fast. So fast," she kept repeating. And her shaking father could hardly speak. Her oldest two brothers held ten year old Brian's shoulders as he sobbed uncontrollably. At that, tears formed in Dee Dee's eyes, which she quickly rubbed out of sight with a fingertip.

Fifteen minutes later Karcher returned. "I'll put Staples at your full-time disposal until you get settled in at the enclave. I'd expect you to be diving into your new responsibilities by the end of the week." A condescending smile. "And don't worry about Dee Dee. She'll be fine. I guarantee it."

Brian broke from his brothers and ran to his sister. The family had to wrench his arms from her. And then they were gone. Linda Rodriguez, Dee Dee's earth mother nanny, was ushered in. Linda, a 32 year old unmarried woman of Mexican Indian descent, had a beautiful dark oval face, with a perfect complexion, a face perfectly framed by long black hair she usually wore in a tightly drawn back ponytail. She was short (5-1) and relatively thin. In social situations, she tended to be shy, even withdrawn, but in the company of children she was totally in charge. As soon as she entered, Karcher left to attend to his other picnic guests. Linda, in her natural element now, touched Dee Dee; the girl melted weeping into her welcoming and comforting arms.

That night, two thousand miles away, to Linda Rodriguez' humming of an old Mexican lullaby, Dee Dee fell into soft sleep in her new bed in her comfortable apartment high in the south tower of Karcher's Keep, in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

*****

Part 3 - The expanding universe

Through the next year or so Dee Dee settled into comfortable peace with the rituals of her new home. She never permitted herself to appear enthusiastic about any particular learning step, but she was docile and made more than the expected progress in all areas. She had little problem with classical Greek and Latin languages, and within months spoke French like a native, but tinged with the same Occitan dialect spoken by her tutor, who was born and spent most of his childhood in the southern French province of Languedoc. With one-on-one instruction she flew through the most complex mathematical concepts her tutor offered. As Karcher planned, her English language tutor held her under tight grammatical, structural, and usage rein even as he encouraged her to create essays, stories, and poems one after another. Her water and oil color efforts in art were held to similar critical standards. She became adept at microscope and telescope. And computer science and practice. She learned how to use the internet for her own purposes; however, getting on-line was only permitted in the presence of her tutor, who checked the computer log often to assure she didn't slip onto the net while his back was turned. The computer room was kept locked when the tutor wasn't in the Keep. She did have her own computer in her quarters, with programs galore, including encyclopedias, atlases, anthologies, word processors, hardware for specific interests, and games challenging enough for her abilities. But no internet access.

The literature tutor was under Karcher and Staples' strict orders to permit her to explore heavier themes under supervision. Movie videos were included in her literature work. She was encouraged to view historical films and period pieces. No typical children's fare was permitted in her formal literature classes, although her nanny Linda made sure there was plenty of kid stuff available after hours. Nobody, including Karcher himself, dared challenge any decision of hers for Dee Dee's "home" life. Through the year in the evenings with Linda, Dee Dee would enjoy the whole collection of Shirley Temple films, and most of Disney's offerings . . . no matter what her literature tutor thought of their worthiness for the girl. Dee Dee loved everything Linda did for her. Interestingly, one movie Dee Dee really loved, National Velvet, was included in her formal literature offerings, but she had Linda play it often for her after hours. As she moved toward eleven, her readings started to include more adult themes - sex, violence, etc. - but under strict supervision.

The girl's physical development was thoroughly attended to. Here, too, she had her own trainer/tutor. Her gymnastic skills advanced rapidly. And she was given heavy doses of competitive sports - soccer, basketball, volleyball, tennis, swimming, and softball. She was allowed to participate after hours on local community youth teams. For the length of the games she was permitted to mingle with the other girls, but the second the final whistle would blow, she'd be whisked back to the Keep. She was never permitted to meet socially with any of her teammates. She became a hard-driving competitor in all sports. There was no choice what with her trainer always breathing down her neck.

For the most part, Dee Dee's outward behavior was passive. She never argued or challenged decisions made for her, or the directions her tutors would take in her education. Not even with a questioning look. Pouting or whining weren't in her character. Just once did she exhibit a sign of rebellion, and that was more symbolic than demonstrative. One day late in her tenth year, while in the pool practicing her breast stroke under the stern eyes of her trainer, Karcher entered the room and asked for her to come stand before him so he could check her development since his last visit. As she bore his intense gaze, she was taken with an uncharacteristic impulse. Without a word, she peeled her one-piece suit down to her ankles, quickly stepped out of it, and stood defiantly naked before him. To her it was an act of defiance. To Karcher it suited his purpose quite well. He actually smiled in appreciation. However, the positive feeling of independence she experienced from the act moved her to finish the session with her trainer without putting the suit on again. Thereafter, she always swam in the nude in the pool at The Keep no matter who was present at the time. When her trainer questioned Staples about it, he shrugged. Karcher's instructions had always been to indulge the girl as long as it didn't interfere with her educational program. Of course, at swimming meets away from The Keep she was always properly suited.

Karcher didn't believe in god. He always felt religion was anathema to scientific progress. Thus, Dee Dee received no religious instruction. However, she did receive a thorough education in comparative religions and religious history as it affected the course of mankind. Of course, Karcher and Staples realized Linda was a religious soul and there was no control over what religious influence she might exert. Que sera, sera.

Unknown by all the adults in her life - actually a possibility they'd never thought to consider - even as she endured the most intense educational program imaginable for a child, she never ceased to pursue her own personal interests, her own private learning goals and methodology. Her self-impelled agenda was like a computer program constantly at work in the background of her busy mind, into which she'd post data and observations from her every experience.

She was ever studying the adult, even as the adult controlled her pursuits. She found little use for her tutors as she viewed her nebulous future. None revealed much of his own life. As it concerned Dee Dee, their focus was rigidly limited to what they were to teach her and how she was absorbing it. The demands of the contracts they signed with Staples left no room for personal involvement with their student. When their teaching day was over, so was their life for that day with Dee Dee. They were a brainy bunch, and nice enough, all things considered, but, again, of little use to the girl.

Dee Dee made it a point to meet and know every employee on the staff. Her free times took her from kitchen to steno pool; from secretaries to gardeners. In her eleventh year her interests had narrowed to three people she decided would be absolutely necessary in whatever future plans she might formulate. Karcher wasn't one of them. Karcher was "The System" in Dee Dee's analysis of her world. He was the institution, the rock, with which she had no choice but to cope. In all the scenarios she imagined, he was always the constant, against which she must contend as he was if she was ever to establish control of her own fate. She understood very well from the start that he had no personal interest in her. She was a thing to him, a thing to take advantage of, to use in his own shaping of the universe.

Al Staples was another story. Since he was in charge of day-to-day decisions for her education and welfare, he automatically fell into what was traditionally considered the position of father in most families. And day by day, by necessity, his behavior more and more adapted to the role. As time went on and on, Dee Dee sensed Staples' being caught up in the role, not only as a responsibility, but as a personal relationship. Dee Dee could feel his fatherly care in his every touch. Into her eleventh year he did begin touching her. Lightly, a hand on the shoulder or back as he stood beside her. Nothing intrusive; just the touch of a father giving his child security.

Frank Ward was a critical element in her plans. Tall and flat-bellied, with thin grayish hair combed straight back, combined with the powerful forearms pertruding from his rolled-up sleeves to make Frank the generic picture of the Jack-of-all-trades independent maintenance man/custodian, the job he was entrenched in at The Keep. He oversaw the work of the Keep's large maintenance and porter staff, but more important, he himself was a force that found its way into all divergent activities on the estate. He was the one who "got things" for secretaries, stenos, even tutors. Karcher and Staples themselves depended on his unfathomable knowledge of the workings of this special community. Dee Dee understood very well what his position was. Early on, she realized he was the one who had the key to all the areas of The Keep to which Dee Dee never had access without a responsible adult escort . . . and all the areas that were locked at night.

And Jessie Leonard, one of the guards at the estate's service gate. An everyman. He stood 5-10. Not a muscle-man, but he maintained himself in good shape. Certainly he was far from an imposing presence. His everyman face always seemed to be on the verge of smiling. He took his image as a dependable guard seriously. His hair was always trimmed and his uniform always clean and pressed. Something in his eyes brought Dee Dee to conclude his thoughts went beyond the day-to-day routine of his job. He was the only guard who looked at her with more than a passing glance. Several times as she explored the duck pond in the meadow near the gate she noticed his eyes on her. Dee Dee didn't know if she would ever be able to get away from Karcher's control, but if she ever did, it would require the help of someone with direct access to the outside - a gate guard - Jessie Leonard.

There was a fourth person required by Dee Dee's distant escape scenario, someone not on the inside. An absolute necessity. If ever she was able to get out, she'd need someplace to go. In today's society a kid can't exist be herself. All kids "belong" to someone. Besides, she knew Karcher would be after her - Karcher and the newspapers and television and police agencies. Outside contacts unrelated to the business of The Keep were hard to come by in Dee Dee's world.

Escape. Late in her eleventh year Dee Dee had become realistic about her chances . . . that is, if she really wanted to escape. At the moment her only problem was limited freedom, limited ability to touch the outside world. She wasn't suffering. She wasn't mistreated by anyone. Her living conditions were nicer than most kids she remembered from the outside world. Actually, she met and "analyzed" many more people now than before. She was also treated with a respect here that she never experienced in her previous life. But something inside her, which she couldn't completely understand, drove her always to fantasize scenarios for escape. "Fantasize?" Was that it? At that point in Dee Dee's musing she'd always shift from introspection back to her scenarios - whatever their meaning.

Not involved in her escape scenarios, but day-to-day; month in, month out; now year in, year out, the only person whose relationship the girl savored and indeed required, was Linda Rodriguez, of course. To Dee Dee, her existence as a sentient human was ever verified in Linda's eyes, in Linda's hugs, in Linda's coo's of concern, in Linda's bedtime stories, in Linda's kiss goodnight on the forehead. Dee Dee nestled in Linda's arms to watch the silly kid movies and eat gooey buttered popcorn - an absolute dietary no-no in her world outside the apartment. Linda was the only one in her life who ever gave completely of herself to Dee Dee, and the thought affected the girl to her very soul. Indeed, Dee Dee always harbored a doubt about whether she could actually carry an escape through to the end. To leave Linda was a prospect too devastating to linger on. There was no way she could include Linda in her plans. It would be too dangerous for Linda's own future. And Linda had outside loving relationships the girl couldn't consider depriving her of. Still, Dee Dee had to live for the possibility of escape.

Dee Dee was well-practiced in reading character. She was right-on in all her conclusions about Karcher. And close enough about most of the others to plan from. What she didn't realize was that her assessments weren't always computer perfect. And a thought she never entertained was that any of them might understand something of her heart.

*****

Part 4 - The Lolita factor

Through her eleventh year Dee Dee's literature tutor took her into the deeper, more adult realms of reading: Salinger, Steinbeck, Caldwell, Hemingway, Mehlville, and the like. This move up was approved by her administrator Al Staples, under the condition that she be closely monitored and guided through such heavy tomes for an 11 year old. All such reading was done in the presence of the tutor. Dee Dee was never permitted to take the books from the classroom. And in all cases, the anatomy of the works and the symbolism they contained were to take precedence over the stories themselves. Nearing her twelfth birthday, she was exposed to two books that impacted her profoundly, and that, for the first time in her controlled universe, provided her the opportunity to shape purpose for her existence: The Diary of Anne Frank and Nabokov's Lolita.

Lolita, in both book and movie form, opened Dee Dee's eyes to how adult men are often attracted to the sexuality that emanates from growing girls. How men sometimes act less than wisely when confronted by a provocative female child. Thus alerted, Dee Dee began surreptitiously studying seduction as portrayed in books and movies. Remembering comments by her tutor while watching National Velvet about Elizabeth Taylor's natural beauty and how she affected men, Dee Dee sweetly asked him if she could watch other Taylor films, especially Cleopatra, which he had mentioned in the original discussion about the star. Dee Dee said she was curious about ancient history as well as the movie's relationship to Shakespeare's works. She studied both the movie and novel versions of Gone with the Wind. Scarlett O'Hara's behavior and effect on men was fascinating to the girl. She also convinced her tutor to take a quick side trip into the soft-back romance novel medium. With Linda she re-watched Shirley Temple's movies, looking especially for how Shirley dealt with adult men. The child-helplessness, the bolstering of their egos, the use of eyes and body language. Body language, she discovered, was a key element in male-female relationships. And especially in seduction.

As she studied the art of seduction, she decided to try practicing it on the three men who were so critical to her plans for the future. But she knew that each presented a different challenge. Staples looked on himself as a father figure, so her approach to him would be as a devoted questing daughter. Fred Ward, the maintenance man, was a loner, she came to realize. He seemed to be aching for personal recognition and acceptance. The gatekeeper Jessie Leonard seemed always to have his eyes on her. Perhaps he was like those guys in Lolita. She'd maybe try out this thing of sexuality on him. Certainly, she had no interest in sex, nor in her naivete did she even consider what monster she might unchain in a man when sexually provoked.

During free times, Dee Dee started accompanying Fred Ward on his rounds. She questioned him incessantly about what he was doing, and exhibited due awe in his many talents. And she thought to sympathize with the general lack of overt appreciation he received for the good he did. "Doesn't anybody ever thank you?" she asked.

"Sometimes," he said. "Mostly I do my job the best way I know how. That's my satisfaction: a job well done."

Ward did start looking forward to her daily visits. He enjoyed the company and the respect she gave him - respect for his work, and respect for himself. She'd found early in their walks together that in his private life he was an incessant reader. What with her own rapidly expanding background in literature, she was able to compliment his ideas with her own observations. She became part of his routine.

She loved his little "office" with it's tools and charts and sweet smell of pipe tobacco. And she loved sitting in his soft rocking chair watching him repair small appliances. She took particular note when he was duplicating keys on that fascinating grinding machine. And she was quick to note the hook on the key-board which held duplicates of the master key he used to access every lock in The Keep. Surely he wouldn't notice that just one of them was missing. Surely. However, even though she'd gotten what she wanted from him, she didn't completely stop the routine of walking with him. As she had drawn him under her spell, he had in his way gotten under her skin. She liked being with him. She needed him. He'd become a . . . a friend. Friendship was a new experience for the mutant.

If Al Staples was to act in the position of father, Dee Dee decided she should go with the idea. Having a father attending to her interests, without judging her for them was also a new experience. She began looking forward to his arrivals at The Keep. He always came directly to her with a sincere, "How're you doing, Dee?" Now she took to giving him a quick little hug in response, putting her hand in his, and walking with him to his office.

She took to sitting irreverently on his desk as he worked at his computer - like any precocious daughter might. She gabbed on and on, about games she played on the outside, about some of the fun things she'd been learning in her classes, and gossiping about quirks of her tutors. Sometimes she sprawled on the floor and remained quiet as he worked on some consuming problem. As she hoped, he began taking her presence for granted. He didn't realize she had the eyes of a hawk whenever he signed onto his computer and surfed necessary web pages. She easily memorized the user name and password he used for all his computer activities. She also noted that he never checked the computer log. Why should he? His office was always locked tight when he was gone.

Armed with the purloined master key, Dee Dee began a new routine. Now in the middle of the night, she'd check to make sure Linda was asleep, and she'd tiptoe out on nightly excursions in and around The Keep. Usually an hour; sometimes longer. Staples' office was a regular stop. She used his computer to go to all those places on the net she wasn't allowed on her own or the classroom computer. She didn't worry about the log. But she didn't erase it. A missing log would be more obvious than unexplained page visits. Most of her research late in her eleventh year centered on the holocaust.

During her night travels she also became aware of Karcher's routines on his return stops at The Keep. And he did have routines. He seemed to love his office with its big window and cockpit desk. She also noticed that when he was at The Keep he usually spent at least one night in the apartment of Paula Matheson, his personal secretary at The Keep. So one night when she was sure he'd joined Paula in her apartment for the night, Dee Dee, armed with her handy-dandy master key, slipped into his office. She had seen where he kept his precious briefcase those times when he'd had occasion to interview her in his sacrosanct domain. This was not unusual. Usually twice a year he'd call her to his office to check in some depth on how she was managing her educational life, rather than settle for the perfunctory inspection at the pool. She'd dress for these occasions because of the formal tone of visiting his inner-sanctum. She learned early how to tailor her answers to satisfy his main interests in her.

She knew he wouldn't lock his desk. Nobody would dare intrude on his business in this holy place. But on this night Dee Dee did. Using a flashlight she'd brought along for the purpose, she went directly to the drawer she knew his briefcase rested in. In it, she easily found the folder marked "Project Dee Dee." Sitting on the floor behind the desk, she quickly read and re-read the papers titled "Part One Summary" and "Part Two Summary." Then she neatly replaced the documents in the folder, the folder in the briefcase, and the briefcase in the drawer before slipping quietly from the room and back to her apartment. She didn't take time to evaluate the stunning information she'd found. She'd taken longer than intended absorbing the revelations; this in addition to the time she spent making sure Karcher was where he was supposed to be. She needed her rest tonight so she'd not appear sleepy the next day in her classes (Early in her night roamings she'd carefully experimented with the minimum sleep she required for proper attention in the next day's classes). Even at breakfast with Linda she avoided thought of Parts One and Two. Time with Linda was too dear to allow any thought but of the warm feelings that filled her in her too limited life with her nanny.

But later, while her Science tutor re-ran the familiar slides of a stellar nova, she permitted herself to think on her discovery.

Part One was nothing new. She was living Part One: The Reconstruction of Dee Dee. But Part Two, now that was something else entirely. She had that page memorized in detail. Part Two detailed Karcher's wish to combine his own common sense, practical, analytical genes with Dee Dee's wondrous intuitive genes to bring about an offspring far superior to what he alone had to offer. There were testaments by genetic experts about the probability of such a result, considering the range of genes he and she each carried. In her original testing by company doctors, blood and DNA samples had been taken and put through intensive analysis. The conclusions were positive, but not 100% assured by any means. So the plan was that when Dee Dee reached sufficient maturity, several eggs would be harvested from her ovaries and combined with his sperm. Any that didn't result in the desired combination of genetic characteristics would be destroyed. Only those that met the criteria would be inserted in vitro in appropriate female hosts. And then, only the very strongest and most durable embryos would be permitted to live. Her age precluded Dee Dee from being a host herself, but it wouldn't preclude estrogen treatment and the harvesting of her eggs.

For a brief few minutes Dee Dee was tantalized by the prospect of being a mother, albeit not being directly involved in the conception or carrying of the child - or indeed, in the rearing of the child. But gradually she felt an undefinable distaste for what Karcher was planning. The coldness of it all. The inhumaneness. But most of all his intent to create a human to his own specifications by using Dee Dee as no more than an egg farm set her against the plan. But what could she do? Harvesting her eggs would be easy enough even if she didn't cooperate. They could drug her and take the eggs while she was unconscious. She'd never even have to know. Suddenly, her escape scenarios had evolved into the only alternative available to her if she were to frustrate Karcher's master plans.

Her research using Al Staples' computer at first concentrated on Anne Frank and the holocaust. Web searches lead this way and that, but a promising lead came in the form of a reference to a feature article in the local Rapid City newspaper. It was inspired by the big 80th birthday celebration of a local senior, Martin Schwartzman. Martin was 14 when he escaped a death camp in the midst of the holocaust. He survived a long trek via underground contacts to the coast of Denmark. Many non-Jewish people put themselves in great peril aiding such as Martin, and indeed, some of those wonderful people who helped him were executed on the spot for their efforts - sometimes as he watched from hiding. Dee Dee saw in Martin Schwartzman just the outside contact she required in her escape scenarios. Her interest in Anne Frank was from the beginning inspired by her seeing a parallel between Anne's and her plights. From then on, Dee Dee's research dug into pinning down Schwartzman's present location, and plotting the ways and means of getting there from here.

Thus, the seduction of gatekeeper Jessie Leonard became a priority in her free periods - daytime and nighttime.

The predicted high for this overcast early September day was 79. She'd loved to have worn a two-piece bikini swimming suit, but she thought it might be inappropriate at this time of year in the outside public areas of the compound. So she appeared in the duck pond meadow by the service gate kicking around a soccer ball and dressed in heavy sneakers, high dark blue soccer socks, long-sleeved cut-off t-shirt with a motorcycle dealer's logo, and revealing shapeless, light beige, low-rise polyester shorts. A broad area of belly and an insy navel showed between the bottom of her t-shirt and the top of her shorts, which just managed to cover her butt in the back as long as she didn't bend over (she made sure she bent over a lot). It was obvious she had on no underpants. Topping off the outfit, she wore sunglasses with rococo pink frames, and had a lollipop stick draped from her mouth like a cigarette.

She was kicking the ball here to there and chasing it down in desultory spurts. She knew Jessie Leonard was watching her. After several minutes she looked his way and, pretending it was the first time she noticed his interest, she waved in that enthusiastic child's way, picked up the ball, and jogged to the gatehouse.

"Can I come in?" she asked sweetly as she approached the window..

"Sure," he answered, reaching back to open the locked door in the back of the booth.

The gatehouse was somewhat larger than most such buildings to provide room for the gas space heater, an absolute necessity for the typically harsh South Dakota winters. There was a counter by the front window on which a ring binder lay with the current employees' schedules, lists of expected and routine deliveries, and the hierarchy of company officials and outside agencies to contact in case of an emergency. The switch controlling the cast iron gate was under the shelf. To the side was the communication equipment - telephone and radio. Also under the shelf was the rack holding a shotgun. Three pieces of furniture graced the little room. A small desk by one wall for writing reports, a tall stool by the front counter, and a more comfortable padded wooden armchair for the guard to relax in during slow periods. This being relatively busy late afternoon, Leonard was on the stool at the front counter and window. Dee Dee flopped down presumptiously on the chair, ungracefully draping her right leg over the arm - hoping he'd notice she wasn't wearing any underpants (it would have been impossible for him not to notice).

"I'm Dee Dee," she said.

"I know."

"And you're Jessie."

"Right, I'm Jessie."

Dee Dee sucked on the lollipop as Leonard opened the gate for a group of employees leaving for the day.

"It's busy this evening, isn't it?" she said.

"Clocking-out time for the day workers. Actually, the morning and afternoon shifts are always fairly active, what with employees coming and going, and constant deliveries."

Dee Dee: "I guess the night shift is slower."

Leonard: "And more relaxed."

Dee Dee: "That's a .38 in your holster, isn't it?"

Leonard: "So, you know guns."

Dee Dee: "Handguns are part of my curriculum."

Leonard had to attend to more employees leaving the compound. Some paused for light conversation. Dee Dee lowered her leg from the chair arm. She picked up a magazine lying on the floor by the chair and thumbed through the pages indifferently. When the rush was over, Leonard returned his attention to the girl. Back up went her leg.

"You used to be a policeman," she said.

"You seem to know a lot about me."

"I studied you."

"So this isn't an accidental casual house call."

Dee Dee: "I don't do things accidental or casual." Then, again, "You used to be a policeman. In Rapid City. You were hurt in an accident."

Leonard: "Yeah. A drunk rammed my patrol car. Shattered my left knee. I left the force."

Dee Dee: "Didn't that make you sad?"

Leonard: "Sure. I was happy being a cop. I like people. I was doing something people really needed - so they could live without so much fear, you know? When I was hurt, life . . . turned. But things happen. And when they do, a person does what he has to do. Happiness is only ever temporary. You can't keep it in a box. If you find it, you live it while you can."

Dee Dee: "Do you like doing this? Compared to being a policeman, I mean."

Leonard: "It doesn't pay as well. But it works fine for me. I don't need much. I'm just a plain sort of person. I support myself. And pay my share of taxes. I hold up my end. I figure as long as the world's in no worse shape for my being in it I've accomplished something good. And the job's important enough. This job is better for that. And I don't have to be on folks' backs for going a few miles over the speed limit. Or parking in the wrong place. Everybody knows me here. They say, "Hi" when they go through the gate. Sometimes they stop to talk with me for a few minutes. The delivery people too: they know me and talk with me."

She picked up the magazine again. "You like sports?"

"Gives me something to read on the night shift. I hear you're pretty good at sports, especially soccer."

Dee Dee: "Yeah, I'm pretty good. My own trainer, you know." She slowly made her way out of the chair. "I have to go now. Linda and I are going to watch The Little Mermaid. It's popcorn night." She bent over to pick up the soccer ball - slowly. As she moved to the door she held up her lollipop. "You have a trash can I can throw this thing in?"

"Outside the door."

Opening the door, she turned back to him. "Do you mind if I come back tomorrow? You don't have to be bothered talking with me if you don't want to. I think it might be nice to have some company. At least I know it'd be nice for me."

Leonard smiled warmly at her. "It'd be nice for me, too," he said.

Dee Dee returned the next evening and every evening for the rest of the week. She'd dug through drawers of outgrown clothes for the narrow, threadbare shorts that best suited her purposes. And she became quite skilled at surreptitiously pushing the mid-seam off-center whenever she draped her leg over the arm of the chair.

Sometimes they talked about her sports or the subjects she was taking in her formal school periods. Dee Dee exhibited great interest in his pick-up truck parked behind the booth. He encouraged her to tell more about herself - mostly about her feelings, and if she was happy. She was honest about her happiest times being with Frank Ward and Linda, and sometimes when Al Staples had time to play her father.

She'd found out much of what she needed about Leonard's outside life, and she knew he always parked his pick-up behind the booth. The vehicle had four wheel drive, he told her, a necessity for a guy who has to commute the mountain roads between Rapid City and The Keep in the winter. She knew from talking to him and having studied his personnel file in Staples' office that Leonard was never married and had no children. He wasn't against marriage or children, he told her. He dates sometimes. He usually gets along fine with his dates. But maybe because he doesn't push himself much, girls seem to lose interest in his plain kind of life.

Even though she required no more from him at the moment (her escape plans were already beginning to gel), she kept playing the seduction card. It gave her visits to him purpose. And, well, there was a pleasure she was deriving from trying to connect with him on such a personal level. For his part, Leonard never said or did anything in direct response to her sexual overtures and displays. He didn't lean into the inviting pressure when she rubbed her thin t-shirted little breasts into his arm. Nor, on the other hand, did he show even the slightest negative reaction to her obvious ploys. He was accepting her as she was. And as she was loving his acceptance of her sexuality, she found herself wanting to offer more and more of herself to him, knowing in her heart he wouldn't harm her, but allowing him to have the choice. But she meant what she was doing and would go along with whatever he chose. Thus, her overt seductive behavior intensified when her visits moved into the quiet post-midnight hours the next week.

Monday was Dee Dee's twelfth birthday. As you would expect, Linda went all-out with the two-person party in the apartment immediately after Dee Dee's classes. Streamers and balloons everywhere. And home-made "Happy Birthday Dee Dee" signs. And a delicious three-tiered cake Linda had pressured the kitchen into making (Dee Dee easily blew out the 12 candles in one breath). At separate times Frank Ward and Al Staples dropped by with pretty cards. No other note was made of the landmark occasion. Dee Dee's tutors did their jobs the same as any other ay.

And on Monday, Jessie Leonard moved to the 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. shift.

It was almost one in the morning. In the apartment, in preparation for her first middle of the night visit to Leonard's booth, Dee Dee was assessing her chosen "outfit" in her full-length bathroom mirror. As always, Linda was sleeping soundly in her room. In her nighttime forays about The Keep Dee Dee thanked her stars that Linda was such a naturally deep sleeper. Linda's distaste for coffee and caffeinated soda was a great plus in this regard.

Dee Dee was wearing the now way-too-short, simple, thin-as-tissue, clinging nylon sheathe shift she used to sleep in when she was nine. Her arms and shoulders were bare, the light shift being held up by two thin strings. She wore nothing underneath, of course. Standing still before the mirror, with her arms hanging relaxed at her sides, the diminutive garment's hem just reached the bottom of her crotch in front and butt crease in back by less than a centimeter margin. For that reason she had no intention of standing still with her arms hanging relaxed at her sides when she was in the booth. She carefully tested how much of her lower regions would be exposed as she moved her arms and torso this way and that. She was dead-serious about pulling out all stops as she played at seducing Jessie. She was offering him her very soul. Deep inside she wondered what it would be like if he responded in kind. She shrugged her shoulders, giggling at the resulting peep show. Deep in her heart she knew he wouldn't respond in kind.

She chose to go coatless in the night's pre-autumn chilly air, and run barefoot the length of the cold asphalt drive from The Keep to Jessie's gatehouse.

Leonard smiled when he opened the door and saw the shivering little girl in her skimpy shift, the first time he reacted in any way to the revealing garb she always presented herself to him in. Once inside in the cozy warmth of the space heater, she faced him and giggled as she daintily lifted high the shift's hem on both sides for a very revealing curtsy. "You have some scrap paper and a pencil?" she asked him as hiking the shift high up over her hips she hoisted herself onto the small desk next to where he sat on his padded chair. She didn't allow the shift to drape back downward.

Leonard leaned over and pulled a manila pad and a pencil from the desk drawer next to her leg. "What's up?" he asked.

"Let's play hangman," she said as she eagerly sketched the gallows. "Me first." And so the game began, followed by another game, followed by another.

By now her shoulder straps were dangling down her arms, leaving her little breasts and nipples uncovered and her shift now completely gathered around her waist. With due deliberation, she slouched back against the wall with her legs splayed and dangling over the edge of the desk directly in front of Jessie, completely exposing her child vulva for him in the bright glare of the bulb hanging from the ceiling. Leonard didn't try to avert his eyes. In fact, to Dee Dee's undying appreciation, he actually smiled and allowed them to linger on the sight a few moments in respect for what she was doing for him.

As she was about to go out again into the chill night, she stretched up and kissed the man on the cheek. He bent down to accept the token of her growing affection for him. Then he gave her a quick hug and sent her on her way. "You might think about wearing a jacket the next time," he laughingly called after her.

"Never," she shouted back.

"The next time" was the next night. At 1:00 a.m. every night she returned to the booth. She never wore a jacket or shoes - even the one night there was a dusting of snow on the ground. She usually did carry a bagful of little electronic games they could play to pass the time. But she enjoyed silence with him, too. Sometimes she encouraged him to go on and read from his sports magazines, and she'd sit looking into his face. Or maybe read from one of the magazines herself. Twice she asked him to read to her from his magazine. Always, as that first night, her shift ended up serving only as a token thin sash around her middle.

Thursday had been a depressing day for her, and her mood was sullen when she came to the booth. Leonard sensed her distress immediately, but he didn't prod her. If she wanted to open up, she would. She settled herself on the stool, looking out into the darkness. Suddenly she hopped off the stool and stood before him. In a flash she whipped the shift off and threw it into the corner. Completely naked and vulnerable she said to him, "Look at me, Jessie . . . please." He put the magazine on the floor at his side.

"Am I almost there?" she asked him.

"Almost there?"

She went on to explain her session with Karcher by the pool that morning. He'd used those very words as he assessed her naked body. He'd said to Staples, "Any day now, I think. From the looks of things she's almost there."

She literally dove onto Leonard's lap and threw her arms around his neck. She didn't cry, but in soft sad tones she told him about Part Two of Karcher's plan.

"It's my baby he wants to take and reconstruct, just like he did me. I don't want to let him have my eggs, Jessie," she said. Then she revealed her plans to reach the perfect person on the outside to assure her finding freedom at last. Tears formed in the corners of Leonard's eyes as he patted her bare shoulder. He was a wise enough former cop to know there was no such thing as a perfect person for anything. But he wouldn't say that to her. This was Dee Dee's moment.

Dee Dee: "But we're so happy. I don't know if I want to leave ."

Leonard, seriously: "You can't keep happiness in a box. When things happen, you do what you have to do," he told her.

When she left some time later, she kissed him on his lips, and he gave her a parting hug. But she didn't put the shift back on. She just scrunched it up in her hand and strode back to The Keep naked, indifferent to the snow now falling full force.

She returned to the booth on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights - and every night the next week as well. Her mood was considerably lighter. However, now that she'd made that final step across the bar, she always left the shift behind, making the chilly dash down the road from The Keep to the gatehouse totally nude. Now, every time she entered the warm room she'd giggle with joy, pirouette proudly naked for him, and then leap into his welcoming arms - there was no longer even a token separating her from him. Otherwise, their activities were much the same as before. As she continued her seductive posturing for him, they'd play hangman and small electronic games; read together and separately and to each other; sometimes tell stale knock-knock jokes; and sometimes sit silently and enjoy the mere presence of each other. At night, traffic through the gate was sparse, and approaching headlights could be seen from far enough away for Dee Dee to duck out of sight until the vehicle passed. While he pointedly tried to avoid touching her inappropriately, he had no qualms about cuddling the nude child in his arms, sometimes holding her tightly against himself when he sensed her need for the security of a strong man who loved her and would do anything to keep her from harm. And there were times his eyes reflected the sadness of a man who was really powerless to help the one he'd come to love most in the whole world.

Dee Dee's plans had been revised in light of the evolved loving relationship with Leonard. In a way, the seduction had worked, but not to elicit sexual feelings from him as she'd originally intended. She realized he loved her and that he'd help her escape if she asked. And she loved him from the depths of her soul. As bright as she was, she couldn't put into words why her profound love for him was the very thing that prevented her from using him in her escape plans. Somehow to do so would be to corrupt their love.

But during her nightly visits to the booth she did take account from her hiding place of the cars passing out the gate from the compound, focusing especially on those that came through every night at about the same time. Peeking over the counter as the cars passed, she memorized the license plates of those she thought might serve her purpose. She was especially interested in a pick-up truck whose routine departure never varied by more than five minutes. All employee vehicles using the company parking lot had to be registered in The Keep's operations office - and therefore, the list was accessible on Al Staples' computer. Al insisted on keeping thorough records on hand of all important Keep activities. The pick-up truck belonged to Brad Kleifisch, aide in The Keep's emergency clinic. She checked him out thoroughly, and had his address memorized, as well as the schedules and routes of buses that passed closest to his home. Once she had that information in hand, she set about the dead-serious business of firming up her escape plans.

One afternoon as Staples sat before the computer he had the sense that all wasn't as he'd left it a few days earlier. Men don't rise to such power positions without being in control of everything in their sphere of authority. He opened up the log and saw the overwhelming activity of the computer at the oddest hours. He started to scan the entries but stopped almost immediately. A thoughtful expression fell over his face, and then he erased the log completely.

During her afternoon free periods, Dee Dee still met with Frank Ward and accompanied him for awhile on his rounds. One day as he was eating his bag lunch in his "office" - with Dee Dee quietly sharing the space, he said to her, "You know, Dee Dee, every month the company inventories my key-board. I'm held responsible for any missing keys. There's an audit scheduled this coming Tuesday. After that, they won't check again for another month." She smiled coyly. The next day Ward found a full complement of master keys on the key-board.

With Leonard now on the 5:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m shift, Dee Dee's visiting opportunities were limited. But this one day she did break away from Linda at lunchtime long enough to dash down to the booth. As soon as he opened the door for her, she jumped into his surprised arms. Tearfully, she kissed him on the lips. Then she moved slowly to the door. A small wave, and she was gone. No words were spoken, but Leonard knew the day had come.

*****

Part 5 - Escape

During her afternoon free hour Dee Dee gathered the few articles she'd need for the escape and carefully placed them in her mini-backpack. Two extra pair of socks, a couple sticks of panties, a towel and washcloth, a pack of tissues, a writing pad and ballpoint pen, a t-shirt and soccer shorts, and one hand-held computer game. She set the backpack on the floor of her closet, and laid the clothes she planned to wear in her top bureau drawer. She left her down jacket and wool pullover cap on the chair by the bed. She often left such outside things on the chair for quick grabbing when planning to go out at free times.

That night, after Linda's movie and popcorn, Dee Dee kissed her nanny and went off to bed, averting her glistening eyes from Linda's sharp gaze. She put on her clothes from the drawer and hopped into bed. She drew the cover up to her neck waiting for Linda's official nightly tucking-in ceremony.

At 12:45 a.m. Dee Dee slipped quietly out of bed, quickly retrieved her backpack from the closet, donned her jacket, slowly opened her bedroom door, and tip-toed across to the livingroom door just as she'd been doing for the past several months. As she was about to open the door to the hall, Linda stepped from the shadows.

"Here, honey," she said. "It's cold out: you should have a scarf." Tenderly she wrapped the scarf around the collar of Dee Dee's down jacket. Then she squeezed some bills into the girl's hand. "Two hundred dollars. All I have. If I'd have known it would be tonight . . ."

Dee Dee smothered the woman in her arms. "Oh, Linda."

"Now go, honey."

In the minimally lit employees' parking lot, Brad Kleifisch didn't notice the small form huddled under the tarp in the back of his pick-up truck. A few minutes later he was tooling down the twisting road toward Rapid City.

Martin Schwartzman, the beloved, grizzled curmudgen of the Rapid City Jewish community, hadn't had a decent night's sleep for a decade. Such is the life of an octogenarian. And he was too attached to his nightly three coffees to even consider tempering that almost life-long habit. As he sat at the table in his kitchen contemplating the dark outside his window, he heard an out-of-place sound coming from his office - actually the house's spare bedroom, now of no used to an old curmudgeon like him who had no toleration for overnight guests. He didn't keep a lot of money in the house, but he had many keepsakes that he treasured dearly, keepsakes from a distant past he refuses to forget. He picked up the only weapon-like object in the kitchen - a broken golf putter - and crept down the dark hall towards his office. The light was on in the room. He cocked the putter, took a deep breath, and stepped into the doorway. Dee Dee was standing at the side of his desk, next to the open window.

The adolescent and the senior stared at each other.

Finally, Dee Dee broke the ice. "I'm . . ."

Schwartzman: "I know who you are. Anybody in Rapid City who reads a newspaper or watches the local t.v. news knows who you are. John Karcher's kid . . . from The Keep."

She added, "Dee Dee."

Schwartzman: "Yes, Dee Dee." He moved to his chair behind the desk. "Might as well make ourselves comfortable."

Dee Dee drew up the only other chair in the room, a plain armless wooden piece of furniture, and sat down facing him.

"Want something to drink. Soda? Coffee, maybe? If so, you'll find them in the kitchen."

Dee Dee: "No, I'm okay."

Schwartzman studied the child sitting so primly nervous before him. "Usually people who want to talk to me call ahead."

"I was afraid you wouldn't want to see me."

Schwartzman: "Your assumption was correct. You've obviously run away from The Keep. I have a healthy aversion to private conversations with rich and famous runaway adolescent heiresses."

A moment of consideration. Then, "But you're here, and I'm here. So what's the deal? I can't conceive of anything such as you could want from such as me."

Dee Dee gathered her determination and answered, "You escaped the death camps when you were a kid."

Schwartzman: "Ahh, my fifteen minutes of fame. But I don't see the relevance."

Dee Dee: "You couldn't have done it alone. In the article you said a lot of people helped you get away."

Schwartzman: "The article: of course. You're correct. I couldn't have done it alone. I'm still not sure I understand . . ."

Dee Dee: "I can't do it alone, either. I'm a kid. I can't rent an apartment. I can't work without a permit. I can't travel on my own. If I walked the street alone during school hours, I'd be picked up. I can't even go into a store or restaurant without attracting attention. Like you said, everybody around here recognizes me."

Schwartzman: "But you're not escaping a death camp. No disrespect intended, but you're just a runaway kid. A runaway rich and famous kid. The jacket you're wearing: not the standard issue in death camps. I don't see any bruises on your face. You sure don't appear to be starving."

Dee Dee: "I'm not running away; I'm escaping."

Schwartzman, chuckling: "From poison gas showers?"

Dee Dee: "No. Nobody wants to kill me."

Schwartzman: "Then?"

Dee Dee: "Mr. Karcher's Plan."

Schwartzman: "Ahh, Karcher has a plan for you, does he? Oh, he wants to . . . do things to you. Must be terrible things."

Dee Dee: "Not terrible the way you mean it." She took the next several minutes outlining the reconstruction of Dee Dee and the coming harvest of her eggs.

Schwartzman: "Tell me about this reconstruction business. Are you being hurt?"

Dee Dee: "No." She told him about the intense educational program and her tutors.

Schwartzman: "All work and no play, huh?"

Dee Dee, showing some impatience: "That's not it. I have free time to do pretty much anything I want." Schwartzman raised an eyebrow. "And the people are nice to me. And my nanny is better than any mother in the world. And I have friends - adult friends."

Schwartzman: "Sounds like real torture."

Dee Dee: "No torture. But no choice. I'm being programmed like a robot."

Schwartzman: "Programmed with unlimited knowledge. Programmed to reach unlimited potential . There are kids who'd kill for the opportunity to get such programming."

Dee Dee: "I'd kill for the opportunity to choose it. I have no choice."

Schwartzman: "It seems to me that most every kid in most every good family has his future pretty much programmed by his parents."

Dee Dee: "It's the-the, what, the degree of it that matters. Like all countries have laws, but too many laws is like a-a dictatorship."

Schwartzman: "And you feel you have too many restrictions."

Dee Dee: "Yes."

Schwartzman: "Let's switch to the egg business. Why don't you tell me about that."

Dee Dee went into a detailed explanation of what she'd read from the document in Karcher's folder.

Schwartzman: "Hmm. Just an old man's guess, but I'd say you look to be approaching harvest time."

Dee Dee: "He said I'm almost there."

Schwartzman, getting up from his chair: "I think I'd like some of that coffee. I'd think you were ready for a can of soda by now. I'll bring you one."

He went to the kitchen. Sometime later, when he returned, he put the soda on the desk before her, but remained on her side leaning against the desk's edge. The tense Dee Dee didn't touch the soda.

After thoughtfully sipping at his coffee, Schwartzman continued: "This last you were saying about harvesting your eggs and creating a baby to specification: now I do have concerns about that. Serious concerns. Your plight has taken on some serious implications." He put his coffee mug down on the desk and took her hands in his affectionately. "While I was in the kitchen I gave your plea for help a lot of thought, from every angle I could. And there are a lot of angles. I'm sorry if I seemed dismissive of your concerns about the reconstruction plan. But I had to probe the depth of your feelings. What you're doing is fraught with implications - and dangers. You're right in your decision to seek help. I couldn't have survived my ordeal without the unselfish and sacrificial help of many, many people - some I never even saw." He kissed the backs of her hands and gently returned them to her lap.

"I decided to help you, girl. You were right to come to someone like me who would understand how escape is sometimes the only alternative. And who understands how you need someone committed to your cause - the way all those strangers were committed to mine years ago." DeeDee allowed herself to relax as he moved behind her and helped her out of her jacket. "But it's not going to be easy. It's going to require a bunch of arranging - and several phone calls." He helped her out of her chair. "Let's go into my livingroom. You can stretch out on the couch and maybe even sleep a little while I get busy with what I have to do."

As she curled up on the couch, using her mini-backpack as a pillow, Schwartzman laid her warm down jacket over her shoulders. She smiled. A tear glistened in her eye as she said, "Thank you, Mr. Schwartzman."

"Just leave everything in my hands," he said. Dee Dee smiled her appreciation as he continued: "Right now, your welfare is my highest priority."

Dee Dee did permit herself to drop into light sleep as his voice talking on the telephone drifted in from his office.

Some time later she was awakened by the sounds of conversation above her. She opened her eyes. The room was filled with security guards from The Keep. And Al Staples. And John Karcher. She sat up and looked around for Schwartzman. He knelt in front of her, again taking her hands in his. "Oh, my sweet, dear child," he said. "You aren't an Anne Frank. For all of us, life is always a matter of compromise. Your situation is certainly harsh, but more from a symbolic than real-life point of view. You face no death chamber. You shouldn't expect people to risk everything for your philosophic statement. In my morality it's wrong for this man to harvest the eggs of an adolescent child. But as I said, life is a matter of compromise: we're ever having to balance this against that - accepting a single unthreatening moral impropriety for the more important overall good that parallels it. The loss of a few eggs is a small thing compared to the life of an innocent runaway adolescent having to survive on the street."

The expressionless Dee Dee allowed him to again kiss the backs of her hands. Then she leaned forward and almost whispered, "You're wrong, Mr. Schwartzman: I am an Anne Frank." Then the security guards swarmed around her and whisked her out to the waiting limo.

It was late afternoon the same day in the bedroom of Dee Dee's apartment high in the south tower of The Keep. Dee Dee was standing by the open stained-glass casement window, looking out on the serene panoramic vista of the Black Hills. No tears. She seemed to have taken her return to the Keep without rancor or passion. When she was first brought back to the apartment, she'd let Linda coax her to the couch and swallow her in her arms. But she said little to her nanny other than one word responses to Linda's sincere questions of concern. She hadn't eaten lunch, and passed the hours staring almost blankly ahead. She was still dressed in the shorts and t-shirt she wore when she slipped into Brad Kleifisch's truck bed. Now After opening the casement window she seemed to find peace in the surrounding hills and the gentle breeze wafting through the window. Linda sat on the bed, her face etched with lines of concern for the child she so loved.

A knock at the door. Before Linda could answer, John Karcher opened the door and pressed his way in, followed by Staples. "Linda, Dee Dee," he called, "would you please come out here. There's something important I need to tell you."

Linda looked at the girl. Dee Dee just shrugged, and the two of them joined Karcher and Staples in the livingroom.

"Don't be upset, Dee Dee," he said consolingly. "I'm not angry with you. You just forgot your responsibilities to indulge a childish fantasy. Sometimes I have to remind myself you're still a child with a lot of growing up to do before you reach full maturity."

Dee Dee was standing near the bedroom door, facing her foster father. Still expressionless.

Karcher pretended a temporary loss for words as he mulled over the "something important" he needed to tell her. "I guess the best way is to just lay it out in its full tragic essence." A big sigh. "You have to know when word reached me about your little defection I was quite angry. Not that you'd do such a rebellious thing - as I said, you're still a child - but at the danger you were putting yourself into. There are many people in this world who'd love to get their hands on John Karcher's adopted daughter. For the millions in ransom your kidnapping could bring them, of course. But worse, there are people in this world who'd love to hurt me by doing harm to you. As soon as you left the safety of the compound your life was in grave peril. I thank the lord that Mr. Schwartzman was so prompt in notifying us that you were in his safe hands." Aside to Staples, "Al, be sure to send him some suitable reward for being such a responsible citizen."

He returned his attention to Dee Dee. "But as I said, at first I was quite angry. It was obvious you couldn't have pulled off your escape from the grounds without adult help. My real anger was at the adult who would put you in so dangerous a situation. Naturally, I set my security team to work. It didn't take long to come up with the culprit's name - Jessie Leonard, himself a long-time member of our security staff."

Dee Dee came alert. "No, John, Jessie didn't . . . "

Karcher put up a hand. "Not yet, Dee Dee. There's more I have to tell you. Then if you want you can speak your piece. Though I doubt . . ." He cleared his throat awkwardly and then plunged forward. "Your close friendship with Leonard was well-known by, well, most everybody around here - even me. Your many visits to him while he worked the service gate were noticed by many on the staff." He pretended to check the little flip-top notebook he drew from his back pocket. "I think you spent your evening free time period every day for the week he was on the afternoon shift. Actually, I couldn't see the harm in the relationship. Nothing hidden. After all, your visits were under the revealing light of God's own sun." Another sigh. "But of course, God's own sun had no way of hearing him encourage you to escape your "terrible confinement." There's no way I could believe you'd hatch such a plot on your own. Your life with me couldn't have been more ideal. No, your loyalty had to have been undermined by a sinister mind."

Dee Dee: "No! No! Jessie . . ."

The hand again. "There's still more I have to tell you." A really big sigh. "Look, child, I'm your legal father. That's a powerful responsibility. I didn't take kindly to Leonard's behavior in this whole sad affair. So I asked our director of security to call Leonard in so I could confront him directly on the matter."

Dee Dee had her face buried in her hands. "No, no, no, no, no."

The hand. "There, there, child; I understand your wishing to protect him. But you see . . . " He turned his eyes aside as if to hide incipient tears. "The thing is - I don't know - maybe he was panicking. Kidnapping is a federal offense. Whatever. He apparently wasn't attending to the thin layer of new snow on the roads from Rapid City, which are bad enough under the best of conditions." A final sigh. "Anyway, the long and short of it is he skidded off the road and down the mountain side. His car exploded. Alas, poor little Dee Dee, your friend Jessie Leonard is dead." He took a step in her direction. "You can see why I couldn't let you speak for the man until you knew the whole story. Now, if you want to . . ."

Stunned, Dee Dee's hands dropped to her sides. Two full minutes of quiet gripped the room. Finally, she sniffed back the tears spilling over her bottom eyelids. She just stared at Karcher. "You had him killed," she said in a soft but absolute tone.

"How can you say such a thing, child?" He stepped towards her, but she took an equal backward step. He stopped. "I understand. You must be devastated." A long pause as he watched the girl staring unblinkingly at him. Hatred filled her eyes. No, not hatred, but . . . he didn't know. He never had patience for complicated emotions. In truth, what was reflected in her eyes was resignation. He was actually frustrated that she wasn't responding as he'd assumed she would. So he shifted the subject - very awkwardly, which made him angry at himself. "Awkward" was a feeling he rarely allowed himself. It tended to undermine his sense of power.

"But life has to go on. Take the rest of today off. You can get back into your education routine tomorrow. Full tilt is the best way. Put the sad past behind you where it belongs. Oh, by the way, I understand from Mr. Schwartzman that somehow you found out about the second part of my plans for you. About harvesting your eggs. Not to fret about that, Dee Dee. It'll be no big deal. Probably you won't lose more than a day, and sleep through most of that."

He took a surprise step to stand less than a foot in front of her. He put his hands on her shoulders. She stood her ground. "Now, what say we depart from the usual. I'd like you to have dinner with me in the big hall this evening." He checked his watch. "Time has a way of flying, they say. Actually, we should be getting down there now."

She took on a thoughtful mien. Then: "All right, John. But I need to go in and put on some fresh things. I've been in these two days now. It'll only be a minute."

Karcher was perturbed that the girl had taken to calling him by his given name. There wasn't a human in the universe he allowed that privilege. He'd talk to her later about that. Maybe at dinner. He looked at his watch again. "Okay, Dee Dee. But hurry. They're probably impatiently waiting for us down there." While Dee Dee went into her bedroom, Karcher moved over to Staples. "I assume you've seen to the preparations for the picnic at Camelot this weekend."

"Of course," Staples said.

Karcher checked his watch three times in the next minute. "Linda, see what's keeping her. I don't like to be made to wait on anybody."

Linda: "It's only been a . . ."

Karcher: "Just go see."

Linda tapped lightly on the door and pushed it open. "Dee Dee?" she called softly.

A second. Then Linda screamed, "No, Dee Dee, no!"

Karcher and Staples pushed past Linda into the bedroom.

Dee Dee was standing within the frame of the open casement window.

She was naked.

"This is me," she said softly to her foster father. "This is what I am. This is all that I am. There is no life with you."

She pivoted around to look out over the panoramic vista of the Black Hills. "Life was in the little gatehouse with Jessie," she whispered into the breeze massaging her bare body.

She raised her arms high and executed a beautiful swan dive, exactly the way she'd been taught in her swimming classes.

The hushed sound of her slight body smashing onto the boulder far below wasn't even heard in the apartment high in the south tower.

The consuming silence that had engulfed the three people still standing just inside the bedroom door was finally broken by Karcher. "God! Poor little Dee Dee." A deep Karcher sigh. "But I guess what's done is done. Staples, I'd appreciate your staying around to get things cleared up. I probably won't be back for three months or so. Oh, and make sure you take time out from whatever you're doing here to join me at the picnic at Camelot this weekend." He swept out of the apartment.

*****

Part 6 - A stand of ponderosa pines

Al Staples asked that Linda Rodriguez and Frank Ward meet him in the executive parking lot of The Keep. The chauffeur was waiting at the limo holding the door open for them. Staples waved off Ward's attempted protest that his schedule was loaded through the morning. "They'll just have to wait," he said as he pressed Ward and Rodriguez into the vehicle. Staples had his own estate within a thirty minute drive of The Keep. He said nothing to the two as the limo negotiated the mountain curves along the way. Certainly his estate was nowhere near as pretentious as Karcher's medieval castle, but the sprawling two-story mansion was posh enough. There were no expansive lawns as at The Keep, but the building was secured on its twenty acre site by a high wall and a guard patrol of its own. However, the mansion and grounds were only a small part of the 5,000 acres that comprised his land holding, which was not fenced apart from the surrounding forest. His home was like an island in an ocean of trees.

Staples had the chauffeur relax inside while he ushered his guests to an electric cart for the remainder of his intended itinerary. After following a narrow path for several minutes, he stopped the cart at a small clearing with a well cared-for picnic table. He had Rodriguez and Ward sit on one bench while he faced the anxious twosome from the bench on the opposite side.

"There's no way we can be overheard here, so your words will carry no further than this time and place. I'll get right to the point. First, you have to know that not only was I aware of the direction Mr. Karcher's investigation into Dee Dee's disappearance had taken, but I'd already launched an intensive investigation of my own. And I'd already formulated some conclusions which are of particular concern to the three of us sitting at this table."

Neither Rodriguez nor Ward gave any outward reaction to Staples' words.

"To start with, for quite some time Dee Dee had been pursuing a rather complex agenda of her own outside her classroom schedule. Particularly at night when it would be assumed such a child would be safely tucked in her wee little bed."

No reaction.

"Part of that agenda included visits to most areas of The Keep she'd never have access to by herself during normal daytime hours. Areas she shouldn't have had access to at night. It would seem her travels took her to my own private offices - my own locked private offices. And even, apparently, to the old man's inner sanctum, where she read files from his personal briefcase at her leisure. There is absolutely no way she could have entered either office without a master key." Turning to Ward: "One of your master keys, Frank. I know, because when I suspected my office had been entered, I checked the inventory in your room."

Ward shrugged.

Staples: "You knew she had the key."

"Yes," Ward confirmed indifferently.

"Staples: "Good. And at this point I'll have to admit to you that when I found out about the girl's nighttime ventures, I, in my turn, said nothing to her . . . or anyone else. It seems you and I were on the same wavelength where it concerned Dee Dee Karcher."

Ward smiled.

Turning to Rodriguez, "Now you, Linda: there's no way anybody could convince me that the one child under your charge could leave your apartment in the middle of the night for sometimes hours at a time without such a dedicated child care-giver as yourself knowing."

Now she smiled. "I knew every time she left and exactly how long she was gone each time."

Staples: "Good. Now it's the three of us. But Linda, did you know about her seeing Jessie Leonard during her free periods?"

Rodriguez: "I heard the talk." A sigh. "But did you know that she visited Mr. Leonard in his booth in the middle of the night every night for two weeks?"

Both Staples and Ward seemed surprised.

Staples: "What, I mean, do you know . . .? Weren't you worried?"

Rodriguez: "Of course. Especially when I saw that she was wearing hardly a stitch."

She let the revelation sink in.

Then continuing: "And later, not even a stitch. I followed her one night."

Staples: "And you didn't ...?"

Rodriguez: "I watched that one night - from the dark outside the windows. You don't have to know the details of what went on. What I saw was that they loved each other deeply - she verifying her love for him in her way; he verifying his love for her in his way. I didn't go back after that one night. Their times together were none of my business. All I cared about was that a child who never knew joy in her life had found happiness in our gatekeeper's gentle loving hands."

The peaceful forest settled softly on the shoulders of the three people unified by their love for an innocent child.

Finally, Staples: "As I said, I conducted my own investigation. From the start, it was obvious that Jessie Leonard hadn't taken Dee Dee from the compound. Best I can figure it, she had to have taken off well before he came on duty. I'd guess she stowed away in some innocent bystander's pickup. Probably Brad Kleifisch. The timing fits."

A pause. Then Staples again: "Karcher knew that from the outset, too. Actually, he wasn't that interested in who she hitched a ride with. What I want you two to know is that Dee Dee was right. There's no doubt he had Jessie killed. I know Karcher. He's ruthless. But it wasn't Jessie he cared about: he was punishing Dee Dee."

Without pausing, Staples shifted direction: "I thought about taking Karcher on. Proxy war sort of thing. I've amassed plenty enough clout. But he's beyond being hurt personally, even if I won in the end. And there would be a lot of people hurt - stockholders and employees. So I changed my mind. I'll go ahead and finish the assignment to clear things up around here. Another week or so probably. I have to check in at the picnic this weekend. No big deal. I'll tender my resignation to Mr. Karcher then. No worry, I'll be able to latch onto my kind of work someplace else easy enough." Shifting direction again, he turned to Rodriguez: "With your job at The Keep finished, you're left hanging. If you want I can make sure you can go back to the nursery job at Karcher Industries headquarters."

Rodriguez: "No. Thanks anyway. I loved Dee Dee. I loved my life with Dee Dee, I loved being a nanny for a sad little girl. I want being a nanny to be my life. Could be there's another sad child out there someplace who could use some earth mothering. I could use a recommendation, though."

Staples: "I'll have it for you tomorrow morning." Turning To Ward: "What about you, Frank?"

Ward: "For me, I'll stay on at The Keep. I don't have that much to do with Karcher; he's not there that much anyway. But I like the people. I have value to them. But mostly, I want to be on hand if Karcher gets it in his head to take on another mutant."

Another period of separate private musings.

Then Staples: "There's still one more piece of business at attend to. If you two have the heart for it, I'd appreciate your joining me." He explained in the briefest necessary details the task yet to be done. Then the three returned to the electric cart and followed the narrow road deeper into the forest for another ten minutes.

A smaller clearing, surrounded by a stand of venerable ponderosa pines. A white hearse with two attendants sat off to the side. At the center of the clearing a hole, perhaps fifteen feet deep, had been excavated. A bulldozer stood by the mound of dirt at the lip of the 5 foot by 5 foot hole. A ladder protruded above ground level.

The three went to the hearse. The attendants opened the rear door and withdrew a wooden carton.

"I'll carry it," Ward said.

Staples and Rodriguez led the way down the ladder, followed by Ward with the box. At the bottom, Staples removed the lid; and he and Rodriguez, wearing plastic gloves, carefully lifted the grisly contents and reverently laid the burned and broken remnants of Jessie Leonard and the pulp remains of Dee Dee Karcher/O'Neal on the dirt floor of the shaft. Then they climbed back up the ladder. They gave the box to the attendants, who promised to run it through the mortuary's oven. Staples himself climbed on the dozer and spent the next half hour filling the shaft from the mound of dirt. Then the attendants drove the hearse away, and Staples, Rodriguez, and Ward returned to Staples' mansion in the electric cart.

Back at the stand of ponderosa pines, deep beneath the ground, the organic material that was Dee Dee and Jessie had already begun the natural process of dissolving into the nourishing soil of the forest. And their spirits had already been accepted by the serene old mountains.

*****

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