“Then,” the boy opened his eyes wide, “first governor of Plymouth Colony proposed a celebration,” and fell silent again.
“Why?” the teacher wondered, raising her eyebrows.
“Well,” the boy looked at the class. “They wanted to thank the earth and God for surviving.”
The teacher smiled and added:
“And they also wanted to thank the Indians who were open to outsiders and taught them how to survive on the land. Yes?” the teacher winked.
Debby stood by her desk and looked at the boy at the blackboard, completely immersed in his report. He was embarrassed to stand in front of the whole class and the portraits of America’s founding fathers. Debby tried to encourage him. She was proud that he was overcoming himself.
“Well, that, too, of course,” the boy smiled.
*
“Of course. I’ll add this information and show it to you for confirmation,” going through the papers, said Jean-Pierre. “Tomorrow morning we can send everything to Interpol and the others.”
He stood next to his patron’s desk and looked carefully at the notes on the sheets. He was completely focused on not forgetting edits. The man tucked the documents into a folder and headed to the door of the French external security directorate chief’s office. It was raining outside the window on Boulevard Mortier, and it was late evening.
“Thank you, Jean-Pierre,” the patron said with approval, looking at the concentration of his assistant.
*
“Well, thank you!” Yulia grudgingly said to herself as she read the email, sitting in the subway car. “Another business trip! Could just write an instruction, call. Don't they have better things to do: not to launch rockets to the Moon and Mars, they just bullshit me with these telescopes around the world. And it would be nice if they sent me somewhere to rest, but there and back again. Plus, ‘there’ in this case means to the middle of nowhere.”
She began typing “Moscow–Kathmandu distance” into her browser’s search bar.
“I want to live, I want sea and sun and lots of money. I’m sick of it!” she raised her head and looked angrily at the tired people sitting next to her. “And not to go to Nepal to set up an automatic space monitoring system based on infrared and magnetic analysis, with support for dynamic orientation correction,” Yulia thought, mimicking the text of the letter.