It Means "Dragon To Be" Ch. 03

My wish now is that by then, Tatsuya and I might have found a way to be together. I really want that, Riko. One day with him and my life has changed."

The other woman spoke and Riko began her translation, "My mother says that it is an honor to have one such as you here with us. Tatsuya doesn't know this, does he?"

Silke shook her head, "No, and I'm a little nervous about telling him. I'm not sure how, but I think that my career was one of the reasons that my marriage failed."

"Then you need to tell him, so that he knows and he ought to tell you why it is that his own marriage failed. Now my mother wishes to know if you really want this and if you know what it is that our family has done in the past."

"I don't know a thing about your family," Silke said, "other than I love Tatsuya and I consider you to be my friend, Riko. I don't know why you did what you did to bring us together, but I think that I've got a lot more to be thankful to you for."

There was a long pause while the two women discussed, and then Rico turned to smile at Silke again. "Can you stay with us for perhaps a week longer?"

Silke nodded, "I had already planned to make a call about something like that. I can't imagine that the work to prepare the place that I was given to work in would be completed yet. It's a shipbuilding and repair yard which really hasn't been used in a long time. It will need to undergo a lot of changes to be ready for me. Why, Riko?"

The other woman laughed, "Because my mother likes you very much, Silke. I knew that she would. She now wishes to show you our history and she wants you to learn who you now are, since she accepts you into our family. She says that I must warn you that some of it will be hard, but if you try, then she will be very happy to have a new daughter, almost the same as a daughter-in-law to her. She thought of Tatsuya's mother as her own sister and she still grieves over her loss. If you are willing to learn, then she will see to it that her nephew marries you."

Silke understood only some of what was said, but her mouth fell open at that point and both of the women laughed.

"What she means is that you will be married here, just as our people were long ago. She can arrange to have a priest -- a distant relation -- travel here for the ceremony. We heard what was said about how it was done before, both here and in your country. My mother agrees. So you would be his wife, even though you need to live apart for a time. I'm sure that my cousin would go to see you and you can travel to see him. It is a way for you to be together when you can."

Silke smiled, "I think I'd like that, Riko. But there would need to be a lot of talk with him first."

The translation caused more laughter and Riko said, "Don't worry, sister. There will be lots of talking. Only please try hard to stay for a while."

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As it turned out, Silke stayed for another month. Her education amazed her, taking her from washing the floors at the inn to learning to move silently dressed all in black to learning the beginning of fighting arts that she'd never heard of in her life to a great deal of almost tantric sex with Tatsuya.

When she'd asked, her "new mother" as Riko's cousin referred to her had smiled in a grim sort of way. "It is tradition that is almost all gone now," Riko translated, "the men of our family long ago sometimes had to be away for months at a time. The women had to protect everything then. Both husband and wife had to know how. Tatsuya's mother learned. My mother is happy now and says that it will be the same with you. The need might be gone now, but the way prepares you for almost anything in yourself."

He'd been amazed that this had been offered to her, and he was astounded that she'd not only gone along with it, but that she excelled at it -- though she was only just scratching the surface and had a lifetime of it before her if she continued.

It didn't matter, she always told him. This was what she wanted with him. She was happy if they only walked together when he took her to any of the little quiet places that he knew of, scenic gardens or places with natural beauty and wonder to them.

They were wed in a simple ceremony on the mountainside with only a very few others in attendance. Afterward, they flew to Thailand for their brief honeymoon as a gift from his family. Tatsuya had a friend there. She was the daughter of Tatsuya's mother's housekeeper and they'd been playmates together. Silke thought it remarkable that they'd stayed in contact over all of the years afterward, and she wondered about it for a time.

But everything became clear the moment that they arrived. She heard her husband's name being called from far off and then a little human tornado came shrieking at them to jump into his arms and wrap herself around him.

Pak was a very lovely diminutive woman less than five feet tall and as Silke came to see, at least four feet of that was all heart. She'd found Pak hugging her to death right afterward, so genuinely happy to meet her old friend's bride. From the airport, they'd been loaded into a Toyota Landcruiser and driven to the fishing village where Pak's family had been forever. After a night of drunken celebration, they were loaded onto a steel-hulled scow and taken to an island.

They were dropped off on the beach along with food for a week and some fuel for the generator which powered the refrigerator whenever anyone was there. It took a little translation, but as Pak made ready to leave, she told them that they were the only people around for miles and that they ought to take their clothes off and practice making babies.

There must have been something to it, Silke realized afterward, because wherever and wherever they met, once they were alone, they had no need of their clothing and she was pleased at that, because it wasn't just a honeymoon thing. Silke loved to look at Tatsuya anytime. She hadn't gotten tired of it yet, and neither had he, though it had made things a bit of a challenge for their week in Finland once.

During their lovemaking on their wedding night, he'd asked her why she'd done everything in this way. He knew the answer, and she knew that he knew it. But then, there had been times when she'd needed a little reassurance herself.

"Because I meant it, Tatsuya," she smiled, "For the first time, I have a family. I was not born into it, and I came to it because of the way that we met, but I have never felt anything like the way that they show me that I am a part of everything. Nobody questions what I do and why, other than maybe a simple question and my answer is accepted instantly each time. Believe me, it's a far cry from what I have always had. I want this with you more than ever now, and I know it's what you want. We have a long way to go even still, but now we have our beginning, don't we?"

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When she'd left to take up her job once more, there had been tears, but Silke felt as though she wasn't alone. She had her new family in her heart always.

It might have been because of the events in her former life, but she was very secretive about it, as though she was not prepared to have anyone in her everyday life even know of it for fear that they might ruin it somehow. She didn't know if or how they could, she just knew that she wanted to keep this one secret from everyone -- most especially the woman who seemed to be trying so hard to gain her confidence as they began to work together.

Ginger was always questioning where Silke went on her vacations and over Christmas and why, but Silke never told her a thing and kept her private life very close to her chest. Silke booked her own flights, and she met her husband in a few odd locations over the time -- twice in Baltimore, once in the Canary Islands, twice in Japan, and once each time, she'd even taken the train to Brussels and Marseilles. But every year, they met in Thailand for a week on that island. There had been a near-miss last year, but so far, they'd been three times and planned to continue for as long as they could.

Another thing that Silke never spoke of were the times when she'd just book a hotel room in Kiel so that she could go there after work on a Friday night to meet Tatsuya when his business took him close by. It was a strange relationship by likely anyone's standards, but they were happy and they were still growing closer.

They also worked on her exit strategy together.

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"Both engines stop," she said into the headset a minute later with her fingers on the pendant controls until she heard the confirmation of her command in her ear. U-1101 slid to a stop a minute later and the lanyards were looped over the stanchions of the dock. When the crew had jumped aboard and climbed the conning tower ladder, Silke smiled and led them below. She made a few changes from the engineering console ,and then she turned to them as she lifted her knapsack.

"Run the diesels so that the batteries are fully charged, and then bring her back into her pen. The self-management firmware and the speech recognition software are not loaded now, so it's a totally manual boat, understand?"

When they'd nodded to indicate their understanding, she completed her instructions, "Voice mode is off-line. I've done a look around, but I'd like you to look harder for any leaks in the engineering spaces, in case the system is lying to itself." She slapped the man's shoulder lightly, "You have the boat."

With his smiling congratulations over the success of her testing program, Silke slung her knapsack onto her back and climbed up the conning tower ladder to the top deck and then she clambered down the outside to the main deck. She jumped to the quay and ignored her father's shouting as she walked to the support van parked nearby.

The driver and the support techs were astounded when she told them that she was changing her plans, and that those changes did not include them. She dropped them off at the garage and continued on to her home. Once there, Silke pulled all of the drives from her home server and placed them into one of the black nylon bags that she had in her closet in the main bedroom.

They'd been kept packed and ready for the past year.

With a long glance at what she was leaving, she drove off after changing the security code on her home system. She'd have the place listed for sale within the week. Silke drove to a small house that she'd rented and dropped everything off there but the bag with the drives in it. In one of the pockets of the bag, she found a different cellphone -- one that was pay-as-you-go. It had been purchased for only one purpose, so that she might be able to place calls that had nothing to do with her employment.

She placed one call to a number where she knew that she could leave her husband the one message that he'd been waiting for the past year. Then she dialed another number and when she hung up three minutes later, Silke had another job in her back pocket and maybe even two -- it depended upon whether they wished for her involvement in their off-shore racing program. But she was fairly confident that they would, since it would give them one hell of an advertising kick to be able to say that they had Silke Kriechbaum designing for them.

They were willing to talk about anything, they said, and they had no trouble with the time-off periods that she told them that she would require. They also had no trouble with her designing from wherever she was, which was a good thing, since she planned to be wherever Tatsuya was, as much as possible.

She changed her clothes and drove back to the office. It had taken her less than an hour, and she was still in time for lunch. The only thing that she'd missed had been her father's presentation, and she guessed that unless he had somewhere pressing to be, he'd wait for her and express his displeasure.

And of course, he'd be at least a little reluctant to do that, because then, Silke would express her own displeasure, wouldn't she? And he sure wouldn't find that pleasant now, since she wasn't stuck in a position where she'd be forced to listen to him as she'd been there on the bottom of the channel.

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Leopold was more than a little annoyed at his daughter's disappearance and even more so at her refusal to offer an explanation, other than it was a bad time of the month for her. He knew bullshit when he heard it. He called her reckless and irresponsible. He bellowed at her that he was considering having her charged with the theft of company property. She waited for him to either work off the head of steam that he'd built up or have the cardiac arrest that he seemed to be heading for.

When he'd wound down, she just said, "Oh shut up, Leopold. It's not as though I took the family station wagon without permission, is it? I designed it, and I'm in charge of the test program, so I'll take it out if and when I feel that the time is appropriate."

"Then you're not in charge of the testing, as of this moment," he said flatly.

She smiled, since his reaction only proved to her where she would always be in his eyes and it felt infinitely better than crying, "As you wish," she said with an undertone of warning.

"You KNEW that we'd be having lunch," Leopold said, trying to regain his usual calmness. "I wish to speak with you about a different segment where you would likely find buyers for the boats. There are huge losses now to pirates in some places, such as off the coast of Somalia. They stop ships and take hostages. It costs hundreds of millions every year."

Silke wrinkled her pretty nose and shrugged, "So? You call them pirates. I see only poor people who have been driven to other occupations because there has been no effective government there for so long that toxic waste has been dumped for years off their coast with impunity. Their fishery is almost dead. They still have to eat, and so they've found other ways to get an income. I'm not saying that I sympathize. I'm only telling you that I understand it. I know that there are victims in this, but, ..."

Silke stared as she fell silent for a moment.

"You want to sell my boats to who? Security forces? Is that it? You will now tell me that , ..."

She sat back. "I don't believe it. Even from you, this is low. You can't do that anyway. There are international laws. You'd only be creating a different brand of pirates who hunt pirates."

"There is nothing wrong with a shipping company having the wherewithal to protect its assets in an arena of lawlessness," he said, "Their ships could meet a submarine to be escorted through the most dangerous waters. With the tanks in your design, one boat could remain there for months, perhaps even offering itself for hire to other shipping firms with ships in the area."

Silke smirked, "So you've found another way to subvert something that I have created. It took you a while, but we're back at the same place again."

Lunch had been only some cold sandwiches from a local deli anyway. Silke pushed her lunch plate away. "I'm sorry, but I'm not hungry. I had a bowl of noodles while I watched for seal leakage at the tubes."

Leopold leaned forward, his face darkening with his suppressed anger as he repeated himself, "You knew at that we'd be having lunch."

His daughter shrugged, "So? What does it matter what we agree to? You do it all the time. We agree on something and then you do something else. You weren't supposed to be here yet anyway. I had other plans and commitments. You've done that of all of my life, haven't you? And before you roll your eyes and tell yourself that I'm just acting up like the spoiled brat that you didn't raise because you were too busy, tell me that you're not here to do that very same thing today, so I can laugh in your face."

She leaned forward, "I didn't ask you for this job, Papa. You were the one who sought me out for this. I was happy working for another house, designing outlandish yachts for the ultra-rich. You told me that it was only right that I worked for our family, that talent such as mine -- and those were your words -- ought to be put where it could do the most good. You gave me carte blanche to set up a new division. You told me that you wished for a design which could be sold for umpteen dozen scientific missions, and I designed it for you, exceeding all of your specifications.

Now you're going to tell me that it will be used for other purposes and if I don't like it, ..."

"Come on, Boss," Ginger began, "Aren't you going off a little half-cocked here?"

Silke looked over and just said, "Shut up, Ginger. You mistake trust for stupidity. My test program was known only to the control room crew and you. They know that Papa has no love for them. Yet somehow, he came here today as though he knew, didn't he? Well I know that he was supposed to be on his schooner in the Caribbean, fucking the newest replacement for my mother. Only something like this would have made him leave. By the way, I've met her, Ginger, and believe me, you haven't got a hope to compete."

Before she could reply, Ginger's cell phone chirped at that moment and Silke waited while her assistant took the call.

"I'm in a meeting," Ginger said into the phone testily, "I'll stop in later -- fine, but it had better be important."

She looked over at the others, "Somebody in HR's got a bee up their ass," she said, "I'll be right back. Count on it."

Silke nodded but she only said, "No, you won't."

Silke opened her laptop and took it out of sleep mode before turning it around so that the screen faced Ginger. She tapped the touchpad and then she sat back to watch the other woman's expression.

"I'm not your boss anymore," she said a little sadly, "You are being reassigned. There's another month and a half left on your contract. I've instructed HR not to renew it in this division, though you can ask to have it put up on the company HR list in the other divisions. In the meantime, you're being transferred to Logistics.

Security has your laptop and any personal effects in your office may be found in boxes at the Security Office. The lease on your Mercedes is terminated and you'll have to drop it off at the lease company this week, since you won't need it in your new posting. Human Resources has a copy of the video that you're looking at. It'll go into your files there. I did warn you."

Ginger looked at Silke and screeched until Security came through the doors twenty seconds later to escort her out of the room. But the one thing that Ginger didn't do was take the swing at Silke that she'd wanted to, because Silke stood up and was obviously prepared to defend herself.

When they were alone, they sat for some minutes in silence. At length, Silke turned to her father, "What you do is your business," she said, "for the most part.

What happened today occurred with one of my employees in my boardroom. Right over there. It's cost me a friendship that I now wonder if I ever had. I'll quite obviously never speak to her again. I have thoughts now that you might even have placed her yourself. Nothing surprises me anymore about you. But I have a sense that you'll never speak to her again either."

She stopped the looped playback of the video and hit the eject button. Taking out the disk, she laid it on the table between them.

She hit the ALT-TAB keys a few times to get the Word document up that she'd written. Silke barely even looked at it and then she sent it to the wireless printer there in the boardroom.

"What are you doing?" Leopold asked.

It almost caused her to laugh for the way that it signaled one of the few times that she could say that his voice had sounded a little unsure.

"Nothing that concerns you," she said quietly. Reaching behind her, she took the document from the printer and she signed it, knowing the finality of what she was doing. She got up and gathered her things.