***Tirnanog, Mount Aerie***

***Astra***

“You want what?” Teresa blinked and looked up from her stack of reports. She had been brooding over the never-ending pile of work in her office. Now she was splitting her attention between me and her duty.

“I want more involvement in your functions as an elder,” I repeated myself. “You know...” I gestured. “Like the times when you and dad took me regularly to council meetings. To get me prepared as a potential heir.”

“I thought you lost interest in that,” Teresa mused. “Recently, you’ve spent more and more time at the Old Camp than at home. I got the impression you were seeking a career as a diplomat to the other clans.”

More time? How could she say such a thing? I had been going on recruitment trips for years. Ever since it was appropriate to do so. Sometimes, I wondered whether my perception of time would warp too if I ever reached over a hundred.

I frowned until we made eye contact. If there hadn’t been this teasing twinkle in my mother’s eyes, I would have taken her for real.

I pretended to be offended. “Mom, you know very well I was trying to find a partner and to get away from Hector.”

“To get away from responsibility, you mean,” Teresa clarified.

“I wasn’t trying to get away from responsibility as a whole. You know me better than that.” I crossed my arms and straightened in my chair to show confidence. “I was trying to deal with a bad situation as best as I could. If you had managed to press that stupid deal through, well, I am honestly done repeating myself. One way or another, the outcome would not have been pretty for you and horrible for me. Are we done with poking our fingers into old wounds? I am happy with my decision to take Magnus.”

Teresa wouldn’t meet my eyes now. She looked like she felt at least some remorse for what had hung over our family like a dark stormcloud ever since dad had announced the arranged pairing.

“I am sorry, for what it is worth.” Teresa shoved the reports to the side, finally paying me her full attention. “Etan and Alex are old war-buddies. I suppose they came up with this stupid idea of hooking up their kids and forgot what you might think of such an arrangement. Well, their relationship and reputation suffered for it. I am well aware why you spent as little time as possible at home.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So, you want to resume the boring duty of being your elder’s scribe?”

As long as it allowed me to spent time at the Hall of Law at ungodly hours, that was perfectly fine with me.

“Of course, Mom.” I smiled. “Didn’t I always say I wanted more responsibility? When do I start?”

Teresa pursed her lips. “Tomorrow, the elders will have a session regarding the ever problematic maintenance of the air scrubbers. The Torres are saying we will lose another power generator sooner rather than later, and that the blacksmiths should get ready to make a new one. Even with the second’s and fourth’s capabilities, such projects always take time and require a lot of preparation.”

I nodded.

We simply didn’t have the industrial capability, nor the need to produce power generators in a production line, so it was best to get the process started before actually needing the replacement.

Power management and maintenance of the old colony’s original tech was an ever-recurring concern for our leadership. There were still a few systems that relied on electricity.

The original settlers planned to install a fusion reactor to power the colony while relying on a quickly and dirtily installed system of fuel-cell powered generators. The required hydrogen and oxygen was imported from Earth, which caused the colony to fail quickly when support was withdrawn.

The fusion reactor never came to be realized.

Now the clan was doing its best to maintain the old power generators. Some were powered by the river going through the mountain. Others had been rigged to steam power. Our crafters were quite innovative when it came to making things work.

Magnus once told me about Earth’s stringent regulation systems on how things had to be done. Just from listening to his retelling, I had gotten the impression that if Earth ever tried to take over again, their administrators would get a stroke.

“No! This is stupid!”

A scream from beyond the office door drew our attention, right before a young woman interrupted our meeting by barging into Mom’s office.

“Teresa!” Ivona exclaimed and waved several papers as if she was about to fling them to the floor. “I want my old schedule back. These additional Math and Physics lessons are a pain in my-”

Teresa cleared her throat. It was all she had to do to reign in Iv.

“My… my… behind?” Ivona barely managed to refrain from saying something that would have earned her a lesson in etiquette on top.

I wondered what had happened between Mom and Iv to cause such a reaction. A month of travelling together was enough for me to know that Iv was the headstrong type who didn’t hold back with mouthing off.

A woman who I recognized entered the office behind her, looking exasperated. She waved a folder at her escaped student and hit Iv on the back of her head. “I told you not to concern Teresa with this!”

I waved a hand at Martha, one of Mom’s trusted friends who had been hired to teach me mathematics. And now she was in charge of Ivona.

Martha had a treemonae mutation, but hers was paired with something that made her filaments look slick and oily. Otherwise, she looked like a normal brunette in her prime. A pretty woman with a rounded face, despite the stern expression which she had perfected over years of teaching strong-willed youths.

“Martha, so nice to see you!” I chuckled good-naturedly, hoping she wouldn’t notice that I was totally faking it. Was there ever a student who was happy about meeting her old math teacher again?

Of course, Martha noticed, but she smiled and gave an equally fake reply. “You are back. It’s so nice seeing one of my ‘best’ students again!”

I stood up and she came over, giving me a greeting hug which I endured. Just because I hated my tormentor of a teacher, didn’t mean I rejected her as a person.

Both of us laughed.

“What’s the problem?” Teresa finally decided to end the awkward situation.

“I don’t think I need all that… math.” Ivona was quick to return to her reason for storming Teresa's office. “Someone has tripled my math lessons!”

“Which was necessary, after your brother pointed out a weak spot in your education,” Martha took up the torch. “It’s baffling how nobody noticed before. And if you had allowed me to explain before running off like a child, we wouldn’t be interrupting the elder.”

Teresa smiled and waved the matter off. “It’s fine. We were about to be done anyway. Ivona, from what I was told you need to take these lessons.”

“Why?” Ivona turned the papers around to show us the problem. “Advanced Statistics? Physics? What does that have to do with my chosen profession? I want to learn about beasts, become some kind of biologist!”

I pressed my lips together, remembering a very similar discourse I had with Teresa a decade ago.

Teresa kept her cool and smiled at Iv with a smug expression. “It’s a question of self-determination and one of tradition.”

“Tradition? Self-Determination?” Iv parroted, taken aback. “I think I can be plenty self-determined without knowing math.”

Teresa nodded. “Back when Earth abandoned this colony, our ancestors went through a period of great upheaval. Being cut off from any kind of support, they learned the hard way that it doesn’t take an authoritarian regime to deliver cruelty on the average person. A, let’s call it a ‘political class’ which is disjointed from their people, is enough. So they swore to do everything in their power to prevent the wrong people from gaining power, or giving it, ever again. They realized, the issue lies less with leaders misusing their power. Choose the wrong leader, and you will always have a problem. No matter what. So, they decided to take a close look at the issue of giving someone power.”

Iv looked suspicious. “What does that have to do with Math? Or self-determination?”

My mother’s expression turned sly. “Oh, they had a great many arguments and discussions about what had to be done. Some of the solutions they came up with were smart. Others… not so much. In any case, one of the things they came up with – which is now tradition – is that if you vote an elder into office-”

“You vote?” Iv interrupted. “I thought you guys have a hereditary system.”

“It’s only partly hereditary,” I corrected. “And only as long as a family can stay in power. Our ancestors acknowledged that power would ultimately remain in the hands of the powerful, a simple fact of life. But they also tried to limit those in power by keeping a form of democracy. Besides, choosing new elders isn’t the only reason to vote. Sometimes, the elders are split on policy decisions. If they absolutely can’t reach an agreement, they might call for the public’s opinion.”

Teresa raised a finger and continued. “What our ancestors could prevent, was for those who followed and chose their leaders to be sheep – within limitations. Much of the colony’s troubles could have been avoided if the colonists had realized they were being herded to the chopping block. Someone doing a few fact-checks would have been enough. Which is why everyone who votes an elder into office nowadays, has to solve a mathematical problem within half an hour. Nothing too complicated. But something which ensures the voter would be, at least in theory, capable of fact-checking what he was told by the elder he is voting on.”

Iv blinked. “But… what if they can’t find the solution?”

“Their vote doesn’t count,” I answered.

“Idiots don’t get a voice,” Teresa added. “It’s as simple as that.”

Ivona looked aghast. “That’s so unfair!”

“The world isn’t fair,” my mother clarified. “It’s a simple fact that any population has a lot of unlearned people, more than they have smart ones. Is it fair for someone who has no clue about economy to vote someone into office who advocates an obviously false policy? Just because they ‘believe’ a pseudo-truth they were presented with by charismatic person? Shouldn’t society do its utmost to educate its citizens and ensure they are capable of making an educated choice when they vote over the fate of their entire society?”

Teresa sighed. “Look, I am not saying being able to solve some abstruse mathematical problem prevents you from being an idiot. Far from it. But at least it prevents complete morons from pointing entire nations down a certain path because they fell for pretty arguments.”

“But… but…” Iv searched for words. “If you demand this much from a simple voter, then shouldn’t the leaders have the same, if not more competence?”

I stiffened.

Teresa smiled. “Are you implying my family isn’t leading with a good example? Aren't you being forced to improve yourself despite your obvious reluctance? Astra, why don’t you do us the honours? Think of it as a voting test.”

Damn it all!

Iv look conflicted, but she stepped forward and slapped a paper onto the table. “Hah! As if that has anything to do with being allowed to vote!”

Please, no physics. Let it be some simple quadratic equation or such the like.

I stepped closer and squinted at the neat handwriting while reading aloud. “A balloon with a mass of 16g is inflated with helium to a diameter of 40cm so that it rises at constant speed. But it isn’t gas-tight. Over the course of 12 hours, it leaks gas at a constant rate and loses volume until it sinks at constant speed. How big is the leak in cm³/min? Assume the following: ρ(He) = 0,2 g dm-3 ; ρ(Air) = 1 g dm-3 ; Friction is to be the same during rising and sinking.”

Fuck physics!

I forced myself to smile while I stared at the sheet of paper. It had been a decade since I touched a problem of this sort, but I wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of my mother right after requesting to be given more power!

One moment! Was this her doing? Some kind of test which she somehow arranged in advance? No… the timing seemed impossible. She didn’t know what I wanted when I visited her.

What I was certain of, was that she was using the opportunity to test me.

I shook my head and reminded myself to concentrate. “Let me think for a moment! It has been some time.”

For a whole ten seconds, I just stared at the sheet of paper, figuring the solution must have something to do with force. Why else would friction be explicitly mentioned? Force was mass times acceleration. And momentum mass times speed.

Darn! If I had a day to figure it out, I would surely manage it. But not under pressure in less than thirty minutes!

Then I suddenly had an inspiration.

I split off a sub-identity and tasked it with solving the problem. Then another, and another one. The answer didn't come, so I kept going. When I reached fourteen, I started to feel a slight twinge behind my eyes. A headache was coming on, but I didn't back down and pushed my sub-identities to their limit.

Iv crossed her arms with a smug expression on her face. “You don’t even know where to start, do you?”

That’s when my sub-identities suddenly re-integrated with me, bringing along the solution and a wealth of half-forgotten knowledge. It was like fireworks suddenly went off in my brain, bringing enlightenment!

“33cm³/min,” I answered and rubbed my temple. The problem was solved, but the headache remained. Worse, I now had all those formulas which I had hoped to be forever forgotten in my head again. My alternate selves had somehow stirred up all those old memories of me struggling with symbols while Martha loomed over my shoulder.

“You’re shitting me!” Iv complained. “You didn’t even touch the paper!”

Martha stepped forward and looked at the paper, then compared it to a sheet in the folder she had brought with her. “The solution is correct. Impressive. It isn’t particularly complicated to solve, once you realize you can equate the two forces, but to do it all in your head, within a minute.”

She looked at me, doubt showing in her expression. “I don’t remember you to be such a competent student. Did you learn some new ability which allowed you to cheat?”

I reached for my chest and pretended to be deeply offended. “Martha! You know me! I would never cheat when it comes to physics!”

My former teacher looked down her nose at me. “Knowing you, that’s why I ask! It took me a year to beat enough math into your brain to get you past a basic voting question! Which isn’t that hard. Still, I figured you would be sitting there, struggling for a solution throughout the whole time given to you. Seeing you succeed would have been a pleasant surprise, but doing it without pen and paper? In your mind?”

She shook her head in disbelief.

Teresa chuckled. “You used your new ability, didn’t you?”

I raised a finger to my lips. “Hush!”

Ivona gasped. “She got an ability which allows her to do that kind of Math in her head!? Or find the answer? No fair! I want it too! Why do I have to learn the hard way?”

“So she did cheat!” Martha looked smug.

“It isn’t a cheat which allows her to sneak-peek the answer out of your notes, so it’s perfectly fair,” Mom clarified my old teacher’s false assumption. “It allows her to come up with the answer by herself.”

Teresa’s eyes gleamed. “And now that I have seen its potency, I’ll make sure to utilize its full potential, now that you are my scribe.”

I winced. “Mom, I’ve already a headache from doing one arithmetic example in my head.”

She wasn’t to be dissuaded. “I am sure training makes the master, just like with all new abilities.”

Unlike her, I wasn’t so certain I would ever turn into a mathematical genius. But hell would ice over before I would ever complain about the parallel mind mutation. Whatever had ridden Magnus and me to hunt the mindflayer on that day, it had turned out to be a true blessing!