In The Beginning, Gail Daley [red white royal blue .TXT] 📗

living and working in and around the lodge. Before they left Glass Harbor, Katherine and Corrine had met with several childcare specialists to staff the center. Since Jayne’s young boys would spend a lot of time there, Katherine asked her to look at it and make a list of what would be needed to bring it back into use.

Unlike Katherine's new family to whom she had given their first aptitude tests on Fenris, most children on Vensoog were tested often to check EMPH ratings. They had also been tested on their native aptitudes so they could be steered toward a course of study to help choose a career to make the best of their natural talents. Katherine had tested her new children on Fenris. As a part of schooling, children were also given "hands on" work with mentors in different areas.

Since Violet had more or less chosen her own career path by bonding with Jelli, she would be working with Mistress Leona for the foreseeable future.

After some discussion, Roderick elected to intern in the Lodge’s communications and electronics center as his first choice.

Rupert who had tested very high in chemistry, chose to work in the distillery where the herbs and other items grown by the Clan were compounded into medicines and food supplements. These were used by the Clan, and the extra sold in the open market at Glass Harbor and Port recovery.

Lucinda opted to work with security where her skill at drawing would be an asset in identifying suspects from witnesses’ descriptions.

Juliette would be understudying Katherine so she would follow her around while either Katherine or Corrine explained how to make Veiled Isle a viable working community.

After introducing each of the children to their various mentors, Katherine took everyone down through the underground passage to the barn dome where a crew was assembling equipment to head up into the hills for the annual roundup due to start soon.

It was almost time for the Passover swarms and storms to start, and the entire populace of the Lodge was gearing up for it. During Roundup, most of the cattle, sheep, goats and Ostumus would be brought down from the hills to the low meadows inside Blue Talon Canyon. There, they would be close enough to the Lodge to take shelter during the swarms and storms. Food for humans and animals was being prepared and put in stasis to last them through the long season.

Veiled Isle was large, but it was divided by a range of low mountains. The Horned Cove Station on the opposite side of the island was almost as large as the Lodge Station itself and catered to several Independent Fishers and the seacoast village. To reach the Lodge from Horned Cove it was necessary to either travel along the coast or go over the low mountain pass.

Traditionally during Roundup, the Lodge assisted those farms closest to it in the western hills. Extra drovers were leaving this morning to travel out to the outlying Stations on the other side of the low range of mountains splitting Veiled Isle. The Roundup crew leaving from the Lodge traveled on horseback and pulled wagons up into the hills once it began. Since neither Zack nor the children had ever ridden a horse, Katherine asked the head stableman to assign them mounts and begin riding lessons.

Leaving them to enjoy their lesson, Katherine went up to operations where she pulled up a map of Veiled Isle. About ten new couples and several single men and women, some with families, would arrive this afternoon. She looked down at her list of the new arrivals, checking the aptitudes and skill levels. Zack had also given her a list of personnel he wanted assigned as security. Four stations abandoned during the war because the former inhabitants had been killed could be re-inhabited, but the new settlers going to those stations needed to be men and women with some knowledge of agriculture. A few of the new couples would join an existing family and would only need basic supplies to set up small domes to be attached to established homes. About half of the singles would take rooms or suites in the Lodge, the others she marked to be assigned to several existing farms. She sighed and rubbed her eyes. These plans would need to be discussed individually with the new arrivals, who might or might not be amendable to her suggestions. Perhaps some of them might even be interested in starting those Bed and Breakfast places Corrine kept talking about. Well, that was for tomorrow and Corrine would be here to help. In the afternoon after regular schooling, Juliette would also be there. Not that she would make decisions, but she needed to learn how these things were done.

The Fisher ship bringing Corrine and Vernal also brought construction materials to refurbish several existing structures and build starter domes for some of the new arrivals. Transportation had to be arranged for materials and people out to the outlying farms.

Roundup Vensoog Style

THE NEXT several weeks were busy, but eventually everyone settled into a routine. After a family breakfast, the children went to the schoolrooms and worked on regular school tasks, overseen by Jayne and the two teachers. The schoolrooms held a mixed age group, with each student using their own teaching module with lessons assigned to by their age and ability.

Early afternoons the children either spent with their mentors or with Zack learning self-defense and combat strategies, or with Katherine teaching a political strategy. Sometimes the family used this time to engage in a mock combat/hide and seek session down in the empty caverns. During the day, Zack and Katherine were coordinating efforts to get the new arrivals settled in amid preparing for the Passover Swarm and Storm season. Corrine and Vernal took advantage of the time to take an extended camping trip around the Isle. Late afternoons were free time for the children to engage in activities with their new friends or private projects, and evenings