She looked across the room. The police.
Not that Preston Richards hadn't been pretty reasonable, but he was still the police.
"I expected that we'd fly down there, following the Saale, try to spot where the defectors were, turn around, and come back. I expected to be here for school the next morning. Honest, I did."
Honest, she hadn't. She hadn't thought about school at all. But that didn't seem to be quite the thing to say, right here and right now.
"They're giving her a hard time at school."
Saluzzo raised his eyebrows at Buster.
"Lots of hassling, needling, teasing. Even some significantly nasty threats. She's handled it pretty maturely, I think, for a sixteen-year-old."
Buster could play the game, if he had to. Denise hadn't killed any of the creeps. Or even done them significant bodily damage.
"Unfortunately," Joe Pallavicino said, "it isn't the first time that she has missed a block of school." Or the second, or even the fifth, but it didn't seem he was inclined to bring that up unless he had to. "I've been thinking that, perhaps, a mentoring program…"
Denise didn't stick her tongue out, and gave herself points.
"I have spoken to some of Denise's friends…"
Denise frowned. She didn't have any friends, except for Minnie.
"Tom Stone's youngest boy…"
Denise's forehead smoothed out. Yeah. Gerry actually was her friend. Unfortunately, he was going to school in Rudolstadt this year. Boarding over there.
"… spoke to his brother. Ron suggested…" Pallavicino looked at Buster. "… since they already know one another, that perhaps Missy Jenkins and Pam Hardesty would be willing to act as big sisters for Denise and Minnie. On a more formal basis."
Denise nodded. That wouldn't be so bad. She liked Missy.
"… with some adult supervision, of course."
That didn't sound so good.
"So Gerry talked to Pastor Kastenmayer's wife…"
Denise grinned. The mental picture of the redoubtable Salome Piscatora dancing in seven veils to get Herod to chop off John the Baptist's head had amused and occupied her mind through several tedious visits to St. Martin's in the Fields in the company of Gerry and Minnie. Even if Frau Kastenmayer did insist she was named for another Salome, the one who had stood at the foot of the cross. She jerked her mind back to this… hearing.
"… who suggested that, in the interest of cross-cultural understanding, it might be best if one of the adult mentors was an up-timer and the other a down-timer."
Principal Saluzzo was nodding.
"I am happy to say that Mrs. Wiley and Mrs. Dreeson have agreed."
Denise stared at him, horror dawning upon her face.
Buster was grinning.
Daddy had known about this. The traitor. Denise resigned herself to her fate. Until she could figure some way to wiggle out of it.
"I suppose it's consular work, in a way." Wes Jenkins looked a little dubious. "The mission of the Bureau of Consular Affairs, the way it's written, is to assist SoTF citizens when they run into difficulties outside our borders. Jarvis Beasley's wife is clearly inside our borders."
"Physically," Henry Dreeson said. "She's here, all right."
"Jurisdictionally, then," Wes went on imperturbably, "the first question to resolve is whether or not Hedy Beasley's problems count as being outside our borders. Physically, as you say, she is here. Geographically, her home village is certainly inside the borders of the SoTF. Now. On the other hand, when she was born in that same place, she was undoubtedly born as a citizen of Saxony. Then."
"Has she ever been naturalized?" Noelle Stull asked.
"Naturalized?" Wes blinked.
"Yeah, like we set up for refugees coming into the RoF, way back when."
"So long ago," Dreeson said. "Not yet four years and it's 'way back when.' "
"No, no, pay attention." Noelle jumped up. "I'm thinking, guys. I was working for Deborah Trout back then. I know we've sort of lost focus on it since, what with annexations, like up around Remda, and places like Badenburg voluntarily joining, and then the whole Franconia thing. The only naturalizations I see listed in the Times these days are real foreigners."
"And a 'real' foreigner is…?" Eddie Junker raised an eyebrow.
"Drat it, Eddie. Behave yourself. You know what I mean. Walloons or Poles or-"
"Hungarians." He gave her a teasing smile.
"Not people from the USE. Definitely not people from the rest of the SoTF. But Saxony's backed out of being part of the USE. That means that if John George's delegate is right, and Hedy's actually Saxon, not just born in a piece of the SoTF south of the Thuringerwald where Saxony has administrative jurisdiction, I mean-"
Noelle stopped before her grammar got into a hopeless tangle; then started fresh. "If those old laws are still on the books…" She looked at Wes. "Those old laws are still on the books, aren't they? Nobody's taken them off in a fit of efficiency?"
"As far as I know, they're still on the books." Wes picked up the phone. "Let me check with Maurice Tito."
"Well, if they are, let's just naturalize her. Problem solved. Or, at least, we turn her into 'entirely our problem' instead of 'partly their problem.' Don't we? What do you think, Mr. Dreeson. Saxony couldn't extradite a citizen of West Virginia County, could it?"
"Those naturalization laws were written when the NUS was a country of its own. They may still be on the books, but… I'm not actually sure that a county can naturalize somebody."
"Then why are we still naturalizing Walloons, and Poles, and-"
"-and the occasional passing Hungarian?" Eddie raised up the arm with a cast on it. "Hey, no fair attacking an injured man. Injured in the course of duty, no less. Noelle! "
Wes looked up from the phone. "Hey, kids. Cut that out. This is a government office and you are both civil servants. Not a couple of first graders squabbling on the playground."
"I thought it was a fair enough question. Why are we still doing naturalizations, Maurice?" Henry Dreeson picked up a cup of coffee. "Thanks, Missy."
"The sheer force of inertia, I suppose. We were doing them and nobody thought to challenge it. I did call the Genealogy Club last night. They had some pamphlets about the history of naturalization. Put out for people to use who were looking up their ancestors, trying to figure out where they came from before they stepped off the boat. In the nineteenth century, in the back-time of the up-time so to speak, American naturalizations did run through the state courts and sometimes even the county courts. Not the federal courts. So we could claim precedent."
"So we could go ahead and naturalize her," Chad Jenkins said. "Just not as a NUS citizen or a SoTF citizen or a Grantville citizen or a West Virginia County citizen, but as a USE citizen."
"It could work," Maurice Tito said. "Maybe. Since Parliament hasn't gotten around to passing any nationwide citizenship law. At the very least, that little village down in Henneberg would have to appeal it to the SoTF Supreme Court, for a judgment as to whether one county in the SoTF can naturalize someone born in another county in the SoTF. And, I suppose, once that decision came down, someone could appeal to the Reichsgericht in Wetzlar. It would eventually issue a decision. If it decided that it had jurisdiction, of course."
Tom Riddle sipped his glass of wine. "By which time Hedy and Jarvis will have grandchildren playing around their feet."
"Assuming that I get elected," Chad asked, "should I try at least to introduce statewide legislation, do you think? Get every county and county-equivalent in the SoTF on the same page when it comes to the question of what's a valid marriage? Or do you think that parliament ought to do it? Ed, since as president you're automatically the SoTF member in the Chamber of Princes, would you be introducing it there?"
Tom Riddle shook his head. "Matrimonial legislation was a state matter up-time. No telling how the Crown Loyalists in parliament would weigh in on it. Personally, I don't want to see the USE over-centralize. The SoTF congress would be a better place to handle it. In my humble opinion, of course.