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Respectfully,

Locke

Nothing looked right in Armenia when Petra Arkanian returned home The mountains were dramatic, of course, but they had not really been part of her childhood experience It was not until she got to Maralik that she began to see things that shouldto her Her father had met her in Yerevan while her mother remained at home with her eleven-year-old brother and the new baby--obviously conceived even before the population restrictions were relaxed when the war ended They had no doubt watched Petra on television Now, as the flivver took Petra and her father along the narrow streets, he began apologizing "It won't see the world"

"They didn't show us the world much, Papa There were no s in Battle School"

"I mean, the spaceport, and the capital, all the is"

"I'm not disappointed, Papa" She had to lie in order to reassure hiift, and noas unsure whether she liked it She didn't know yet whether she would like it or not She hadn't liked Battle School, but she got used to it There was no getting used to Eros, but she had endured it How could she dislike a place like this, with open sky and people wandering wherever they wanted?

Yet she was disappointed For all her memories of Maralik were the s, across wide streets where large vehicles looinning to coht, and the cars were sned to survive the next earthquake, as the old buildings had not--were squat Not ugly--there was grace in theiven the eclectic styles that were somehow blended here, Turkish and Russian, Spanish and Riviera, and, most incredibly, Japanese It was a

marvel to see how they were still unified by the choice of colors, the closeness to the street, the alal maximums

She knew of all this because she had read about it on Eros as she and the other children sat out the League War She had seen pictures on the nets But nothing had prepared her for the fact that she had left here as a five-year-old and noas returning at fourteen

"What?" she said For Father had spoken and she hadn't understood him

"I asked if you wanted to stop for a candy before ent home, the e used to"

Candy How could she have forgotten the word for candy?

Easily, that's how The only other Armenian in Battle School had been three years ahead of her and graduated to Tactical School, so they overlapped only for a few ot fro without ever having commanded an army Was it any wonder that he didn't want to jabber in Arone without speaking Armenian for nine years And the Are It was so hard to speak it now, and harder still to understand it