The Heiress

By Eric Hoffman

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to wake up in an entirely new world?

 

Heiress is not the name that her mother gave her, but it's as good a name as she could ever think up for herself.  Her mother told her to stay hidden, to blend in with the crowd, and never to ineract with people from their place of origin. Even though she has never been to her mother's homeland, she knows it well.  She just doesn't understand why they had to leave...

 

Could it have something to do with the mysterious "innovator" that her mother warned her about?  Is that why her mother left her in this strange place with only a computerized teacher to guide her?  Who are all these uniquely gifted agents who are looking for her?  And when will her mother come back for her to answer all of her questions?

 

Until they are reunited, Heiress will have to do her best to build a life among people of a different culture.  Join her in this first of a literary series of novelettes in which she works to figure out her place in a world she barely understands.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Aug 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9783748792802

Book preview

Prelude

It’s hot in here. Can’t we roll down a window or something? The limousine shifted on its axles when he squirmed in his seat.

She wondered why she ever brought her moronic brother along. No. We’re supposed to be discrete, remember? These are tinted windows, so no one can see who we are until we get to the bank. It’s essential to the plan.

He shifted in his seat again and pulled at his collar. Then maybe we need to change the plan. I’m burning up in here.

She pushed the intercom button. Roderick, turn up the air conditioning a couple of notches. She faced him squarely. You better not screw this up. I’m counting on you. If anything goes wrong, you know what father is going to do to you, right?

He didn’t look at her. Ease up, sis. I had R and D work on the gloves. They amped up the power a hundred and seventy-five percent. I’ve even been practicing my moves, so don’t worry about me. I can handle anything they throw at me.

That’s not what I’m talking about, genius. She was already annoyed about having to ride backwards because he got carsick. His typical macho fascination with physical power had pulled him off track once again. The whole reason we’re here is to make sure father’s little savings-and-loan company gets its act together. We go in, we tell the manager what’s at stake here, we give him some time to comply, and then we go home and tell father it’s taken care of. That’s the plan.

He looked puzzled. I thought we were going to lean on him. Isn’t that why we brought all that equipment in the trunk?

We only open the trunk if the manager doesn’t cooperate. Will you think for a minute? How’s it going to look if we walk into a bank armed to the teeth and demand to see the manager?

He thought for a minute. She could tell he was thinking because he always got a blank expression every time he forced his brain to work. Like we’re robbing the place, right?

She sighed. When we get there, please let me do the talking.

Chapter One

The process was complete. It had taken nearly a complement of piin’mikts, but it wasn’t as painful as she feared it might be. The pedagogicus was correct: it was as if she had taken a long nap full of dreams, waking only briefly whenever a new structure had developed enough to spasm. With a series of clicks around the rim of the portal to her Créche, a sound that reminded her of the fluttering of a bird’s wing as it launches itself into the air, the cover lifted up and shifted to the right letting in a gust of cool Appalachian air. The sensation was exciting, bringing tiny bumps to the surface of her brand new integument. Carefully, she raised one of her locomotory appendages and pushed it into the world.

Wait. Time was not measured in mikts here. She would have to get used to that. It was days when referring to the planet’s rotation and years when referring to its revolution about its native star. A day was broken into two complements of horas—no, it was hours in the local language—and each hour was divided into five complements of minutes. Why five, she wondered. Wouldn’t it be more consistent to shorten the minute to accommodate a sixth complement? She would have to ask about that when she met an actual Human.

She positioned her manipulatory appendages to assist in the shifting of her center of gravity so that she could maneuver out of the Créche. The walls of the chamber were made of stone. She had expected that. Her mother had placed her Créche in something called a cave, away from curious Kozian eyes. The same independent power source that powered her Créche also bent light to hide the cave’s entrance. The source of the power sat to the right of the Créche, with conduits branching out of it like the manipulatory appendages of a jh’zuul’t. She found her own appendage pointing at the source as she identified it. Odd that it should do that.

There was another container sitting next to the power source. It was about two-point-five times larger and opened from the top like her Créche. She lifted the lid and found what the pedagogicus told her she would find: several pieces of technology, nutritional supplements, Kozian currency, and a pile of folded fabric. That’s right, she thought, Kozians wear clothing. What was the word Kozians use when they‘ve forgotten something obvious? Of course: duh! She lightly thumped the front of her cranium with one manipulatory appendage as she said it, just as the pedagogicus had taught her to do. She rubbed the place she had thumped next, thinking that next time she would thump herself with a little less force.

She found two conjoined tubes of fabric on top of the stack and remembered that these were designed to cover her two locomotory appendages. Pants, she thought as she pointed at them. She grabbed the pants by the conjoined portion, made the attempt to lift her limbs into the tubes, and promptly fell to the ground. How do Kozians apply pants, she wondered, if gravity prevents them from lifting their lower appendages? She stood and stared at them, deep in thought. Perhaps she could try lifting one appendage at a time, but doing so only resulted in falling to the side. She tried scooting into the pants, first by placing the subdivided ends of her appendages—her toes she reminded herself--into the tubes and shuffling slowly forward. She found that she could only apply the pants partially before a wad of fabric prevented further forward motion. Scooting faster did not yield better results. It finally occurred to her that she could raise her appendages if she began in a horizontal position on the ground. Luckily the Kozian form was flexible enough to accomplish the task, but she needed to assume a vertical position halfway through the process if she wanted the pants to be raised high enough to be fastened around her midsection. Fabric that covered her upper form, where most of her internal organs were housed, was easier to apply because she could raise her manipulatory appendages independently without shifting her center of mass uncomfortably away from her axis of balance. The pedagogicus had informed her of the social relevance of these fabrics, but had not prepared her to apply them with grace. This was another area she would have to investigate.

If only her mother were here. She was certain that her mother would be able to convey the answers to the questions that the pedagogicus had not addressed. It was not that the pedagogicus was flawed; it simply was not designed to explain everything. She knew experience would provide insight beyond the limits of the pedagogicus’ operational parameters.

Even mothers could not answer all of the questions that would surely occur to her. She knew this. She even knew that her mother would not be present for this, her Day of Maturation. It had all been explained in a message that her mother had left with the pedagogicus. Circumstances were not ideal, the message had said, and she would need to finish her metamorphosis alone and remain discreet afterward, blending into Kozian society as best she could until her mother could rejoin her. Avoid identifying herself as Prægk to any Kozian and, should she meet another Prægk, inform them that she was investigating Kozian interaction as a member of the Order of Scholars. Interact with other Prægk as little as possible. Above all else, if she met any with connections to the innovator she was to disappear, whatever the cost. She had no idea what the innovator was, but she would remain alert nonetheless. Experience would undoubtedly clarify these instructions. Still, having a mother around to solve the mystery of pants would have prevented a few patches of discolored integument that landing on the hard ground had caused.

Her primary directive was to establish herself as a useful member of Kozian—no, Human—society. This is what the Human currency was for. Most of what her mother had left for her could be left in the container, but some of it would need to be added to the great pool of currency on which Human society had come to depend. It was foolish, of course, to base the health of a society on something so material, but the pedagogicus had explained that this was the current status of Kozian cultural development. Many advanced civilizations had gone through similar phases and had successfully emerged, becoming wiser for the experience. It was the collective hope of the Prægk that the dominant species inhabiting this world in the Kozian system would emerge as well. When that time arrived, the Prægk would present themselves and invite the Kozians to join with them in the great galactic consortium of advanced species. For the time being, however, social wellness on this world was still measured in terms of currency. If she wanted to fit in, she would have to act as if this currency was intrinsically important. She had learned that the place where the currency of individuals joined the larger pool was called a bank. Such a place was to be her first destination, so she took several of the small, green pieces of paper—a material derived from botanical resources which she thought was incredibly clever—and placed them in one of the fabric pouches called pockets attached to her pants—yet another useful Kozian innovation. She grinned, thinking that she was going to enjoy the cleverness of this species very much.

She took a deep breath as she stood before the masked entrance of the cave, seeing the outside world and knowing that it could not see her yet. What would it feel like? She knew it was precisely seventy-three degrees, as Humans measure heat energy, from the instruments in the Créche, but she didn’t know how seventy-three degrees would feel. Would it be comfortable? How would this new body respond? Humans added fabrics to their bodies if the heat energy was uncomfortably low and removed fabrics if it was uncomfortably high. Beyond that general knowledge provided by the pedagogicus, she had no idea. She would simply need to experience the outside world for herself. Tilting her new cranium backward slightly—another gesture she didn’t consciously cause, it just happened—she stepped forward…

…and could not make herself move beyond the opening of the cave. It was too new. There were too many unknowns. The pedagogicus had trained her well, but it couldn’t teach her everything that she would need to know. What if she made a mistake? What if she made a fool of herself? What if nothing on the planet conformed to her training? Is it possible the Créche’s programming had been outdated and that society had changed while she completed her development? She stood motionless for a very long time, paralyzed by uncertainty, watching the Kozian star climb higher and higher into the sky. In that time, nervous synapses in her new brain shifted and sparkled until at last a new idea had formed. There simply wasn’t any way she was going to find out the answers to her questions, no way could she find evidence to counter her fears, until she moved through that opening.

That single thought stirred her new locomotory appendages into motion. She moved forward.

Chapter Two

Seventy-three degrees felt very nice, as it turned out. Sunlight streaming through the trees of the forest and bathing her skin with warmth was one of the many things she discovered that the pedagogicus could not convey to her. The sound that the wind made as it moved through these trees was also a pleasant sensation, and it was the first time that she was consciously aware of her ability to detect sonic vibrations. Her hands touched the cartilaginous extensions on each side of her cranium as she strained to hear other vibrations. She was prepared for visual and chemical stimuli, but hearing was especially and surprisingly fascinating.

She followed the local map that the