Mosaic - Jeri Taylor [25]
She'd come there early this morning because she was determined to understand the derivation of the distance formula. She was convinced that if she did, Daddy would be so proud of her that he'd spend more time at home, more time with her, the way he used to when she was little. She didn't know what had happened lately, why Daddy had to be away from home so much. It used to be that he would transport to Starfleet Headquarters once or twice a week, staying at home the rest of the time to work. But something was going on; she had sensed it about a year ago, when Daddy began to transport to San Francisco almost every day. Occasionally she heard him talking with Mommy, and she had heard him mention a species called Cardassians. And when he talked about them, he seemed very worried. He began staying in San Francisco for days at a time, then weeks at a time. It had been a month since she'd seen him, but he was going to be back tonight. She desperately wanted to show him she could derive the distance formula, and watch his face light up as he realized what she'd been able to do.
Finding the numerical value of the distance between two points was simple, of course: just plug the Cartesian coordinates of the two points into the padd and it would give you the distance.
The hard part was to find the formula that would apply to any pair of coordinates. That was the kind of thinking Daddy expected of her. But in spite of hours of working the problem, coming at it from every angle she could think of, the solution remained elusive. And then she looked up and realized how late it was.
She burst onto the patio of her house, right by a startled Mom and Phoebe, and past Bramble, who rose immediately to run after her, through the door and into the breakfast room, down the hall to her room. She slammed the door open and began stripping off her clothes, reaching at the same time for the uniform on her bed. Haste made her hands clumsy, and she stamped her feet in frustration; under her breath she said one of the words that weren't supposed to be said except at times of great distress. Pants were on, then shirt and jacket, shoes. She glanced in the mirror and saw that she looked frazzled and unkempt. There was no time to do anything with her hair, so she ran her fingers through the fine, reddish brown locks and watched them lie limp on her head, damp from perspiration. Habit made her reach for the cylinder of sun protector; she tapped the lever that opened the dispenser at the top of the cylinder- comand screamed as something leapt out of the cylinder, something long and serpentine, springing up and at her in an explosion of energy. Her heart raced in shock and her stomach knotted as she stumbled backward, tumbling back and catching herself awkwardly on one wrist. And then she heard Phoebe giggling.
She looked and saw her eight-year-old sister standing in the doorway, hands cupped over her mouth, unable to choke back the giggles that erupted from her. Kathryn stared at her, then looked over to see the thing that had erupted from the cylinder. It was a long coil of polymer that had been jammed down into the container of sun protector-the one thing Phoebe knew she would never leave for a game without using. She stared at her sister, trying to understand this cruel betrayal.
"It isn't funny!" she yelled. But that only made Phoebe laugh harder. Kathryn turned and grabbed her bag, brushed past her sister at the door, and ran outside toward her hovercycle. She had only minutes to get to the school transport site; she was frantic, unprepared, and furious. And in that state she would have to function as captain of her tennis team.
Kathryn and her team materialized on the transport pad of the Academy Institute's athletic department. Like all the Institute's facilities, the transporter site was sleek and pristine, a cool, blue-gray room, spare and unadorned. An Institute cadet manned the console,