There was silence as Moira did just that. Then. 'Oh, damn it,' she said in mock disgust. 'You really are exasperating. I should demand that you spot me two pawns.'
'Not a chance,' Tia replied, ordering the AI to set up the game, with a Battle Chess field in front of her. 'You're taking advantage enough of a child as it is.'
'Taking advantage of a child? Ha!' Moira said ironically. 'You're not a child. I'm beginning to agree with Phelps-Pittman. You're an eighty-year-old midget in a little-girl costume.'
'Oh, all right,' Tia said, good-naturedly. 'I won't give you another pawn, but I will let you have white.'
'Good.' Moira studied the analog of the board in her memory, as Tia studied the holo-board in front of her. 'All right, unnatural child. Have at ye!'
Moira and Tomas couldn't stay long; by dinner the ship had lifted, and the pad was empty, and the Cade family was back on schedule.
Pota and Braddon spent the evening catching up with the message-packets Moira had brought them, mostly dispatches from friends at other digs, more scholarly papers in their various fields, and the latest in edicts from the Institute. Since Tia knew, thanks to Moira, that none of those edicts concerned her, she was free to watch one of the holos Moira had brought for her entertainment. All carefully screened by the teachers at the Institute, of course, who oversaw the education of every child that was on-site with its parents. But even the teachers didn't see anything wrong with history holos, provided they were properly educational and accurate. The fact that most of these holos had been intended for adult viewing didn't seem to bother them.
Perhaps it was just as well that the Psychs had no idea what she was watching. They would probably have gone into strong hysterics.
Moira had an uncanny ability to pick out the ones that had good scripts and actors, unlike whoever it was that picked out most of the holos for the Remote Educational Department
This one, a four-part series on Alexander the Great, looked especially good, since it covered only the early parts of his life, before he became a great leader. Tia felt a certain kinship for anyone who'd been labeled 'precocious'; and although she already knew that Alexander's childhood had been far from happy, she was looking forward to viewing this.
Having Ted beside her to whisper comments to made it even more fun.
At the end of the first part, even though she was fascinated, she virtuously told Socrates to shut everything down and went into the main room to say good-night to her Mum and Dad. The next courier wasn't due for a while, and she wanted to make her treats last as long as possible.
Both of them were so deep in their readers that she had to shake their elbows to get them to realize she was there, but once they came out of their preoccupied daze, they gave her big hugs and kisses, with no sign of annoyance at being interrupted.
'I have a really good Mum and Dad,' she told Ted before drifting off to sleep. 'I really, really do. Not like Alexander.'
The next day, it was back to the usual schedule. Socrates woke her, and she got herself cleaned up and dressed, leaving Ted to reside on the carefully made bed until she returned. When she entered the main room, Pota and Braddon were already there, blinking sleepily over steaming cups of coffee.
'Hello, darling,' Pota greeted her as she fetched her milk and cereal from the kitchen. 'Did you enjoy Alexander?'
'We-ell, it was interesting,' Tia said truthfully. 'And I liked the actors and the story. The costumes and the horses were really stellar! But his mother and father were kind of odd, weren't they?'
Braddon looked up from his coffee with his curly dark hair over one brown eye, and gave his daughter a wry grin. 'They were certifiable crazy-cases by our standards, pumpkin,' he replied. 'But after all, there wasn't anyone around to apply those standards back then.'
'And no Board of Mental Health to enforce them,' Pota added, her thin, delicate face creasing with a puckish smile. 'Remember, oh curious little chick, they were not the ones that had the most influence on Alexander. That was left to his tutors, Aristotle, of course, being the main one, and nurses. I think he succeeded in spite of his parents, personally, and not because of them.'
Tia nodded sagely. 'Can I come help at the dig today?' she asked eagerly. This was one of the best things about the fact that her parents had picked the EsKays to specialize in. With next to no atmosphere, there were no indigent life-forms to worry about. By the time Tia was five, she had pressure-suit protocol down pat, and there was no reason why she couldn't come to the digs, or even wander about within specified limits on her own. 'The biggest sandbox in the universe,' Braddon called it; so long as she stayed within eye and earshot, neither of them minded having her about outside.
'Not today, dearest,' Pota said apologetically. 'We've found some glassware, and we're making holos. As soon as we're done with that, we'll make the castings, and after that you can come run errands for us.' In the thin atmosphere and chill of the site, castings were tricky to make; one reason why Pota discarded so many. But no artifact could be moved without first making a good casting of it, as well as holos from all possible angles. Too
