By the time Jessa had caught her breath and thought she might be able to walk again, she had expected Torah to chase her back to her computer. Instead, he appeared to have fallen asleep. She slipped off the bed with the greatest care and tiptoed from the room and down the hall. Erich was watching her when she emerged in the kitchen. He looked from her to the hallway, then nodded and turned back to his cooking. Jessa continued to tiptoe to the computer room and dove back into her research almost as avidly as she had welcomed the sex with Torah.
When Erich startled her into a soft gasp as he laid a plate of food next to her, she couldn't have said if it was his ability to move silently, or her wholesale concentration on the task of learning, and/or memorizing as much data as possible in the tiny window of time allotted her. Whenever she hit a roadblock, she flung herself at whiplash speeds into a different direction. It wasn't like there weren't questions aplenty to pursue.
She'd been at it about two additional hours, picking at the food Erich had provided - gourmet cooking obviously wasn't his forte, but it was edible and that was all that counted at the moment - when Torah was suddenly in the room, pulling her away from the computer. "It's time. We have to leave."
"I have to delete my history," Jessa protested.
"It's a secure system," Torah pointed out, tapping his watch.
Jessa put her hands on her hips. "Do you want council security or mine?"
Torah straightened. "How long?"
"Ten minutes," she replied confidently. He nodded and turned away, but Jessa saw him rubbing his face wearily as he headed down the hall. She hustled to clear her history of usage in ways that couldn't be recovered and ran out into the yard where the car was, determined to meet the timeline she had given Torah.
Torah gestured her toward the back seat and she stubbornly shook her head. "You need to sleep. You take the back seat."
On the far side of the car, Erich rolled his eyes. "And you'll navigate?"
Jessa spread her feet and planted them. "I have a photographic memory and have studied countless current and historic maps."
"Enough, you two," Torah snapped. "Jessa, back seat. You're our internet interface. Erich, just drive to the house Jacq has prepared for us. I will sleep when it's appropriate." He looked at them sternly when they continued to stare at each other. "Move out!" He added, emphatically.
Jessa climbed into the back seat and settled stubbornly in the uncomfortable center of the seat, struggling with the too small seatbelt only after Erich glowered at her. Mostly, she watched Torah as they pulled out onto an old highway. She didn't remember seeing him look tired ever, but maybe it was just him finally letting down some defenses.
"So what did you learn?" Torah asked, leaning his seat back as Erich drove west and south into the French twilight.
Jessa shrugged uncomfortably, even though neither of them were looking at her. "Not much more than I already told you. I focused on the Italy connection..."
"What about Drau?" Torah interrupted.
"Nothing," she said. "I mean, I should say mysteriously nothing," she hastened to add when Torah scowled.
"There are gaps in his history?" Erich asked.
"No. Which is part of the mystery. Everybody has gaps in their history, especially nowadays. His history is meticulous. And doesn't fit. He has a strong Germanic accent, indicating that he is from Berliner Region. Or from the outlands. But his history says he's from northern Rhine Region. Near the coast. The coast was most adaptive to the new European reality. Like you," Jessa added with a sidelong glance at Torah. "Minimal accent, open to cultural diversity." She took a deep breath. "Bona, you sister's husband, is from Austria Region." She took a deep breath. "And your mother is from what used to be Poland."
"I didn't ask you to check into my family," Torah growled.
"I'm just trying to make a point," Jessa hurried on. "Drau and his history - his real history - is pure Berliner Germanic. I'm sure of it. That is just highly unlikely if his family really came from a region that bordered on the likes of France and Belgium and the Netherlands. You've been to Summer's End. Region of origin goes out the window the first night there. I know the Circles are different, but they are no less aware of the need for genetic diversity." She noted the pulse at his temples speed up.
"So what are you saying?" Torah demanded.
"Only that there is a reasonable probability that Drau is not who he says he is. That's as far as I've gotten with his history." She glanced at Erich and straightened in the seat. "Your history is similar. Very Germanic. Probably Berliner Region..."
"Don't you dare put me in the same lifeboat with Drau," Erich hissed.
"You told me to do the research," Jessa argued defensively, sinking back into the car seat. That lasted only a heartbeat before she was again leaning between the two front seats. "I'm right, aren't I? I'm thinking somewhat north toward the Black Forest." She saw Erich's jaw set and Torah glanced toward her with a hint of respect, about the most he ever gave.
"I don't have an accent," Erich stated flatly, his eyes on the road.
"Everybody has an accent," she said in a softer tone. It hadn't been her intention to anger Erich further. She had slipped into lecturing mode, as if there were any classrooms anymore to be lectured to. "When I hear you speak English, I hear too perfect, like someone who worked very hard to learned to speak the language to perfection. We, almost all of us in Europe, grew up speaking English well before we started doing coursework in the language of our ancestors. But we learned that English from parents who learned from their parents who learned from parents who originally spoke the language of their land of origin. Our accent is colored by that distant, if persistent, attraction to certain sounds, like a genetic memory."
"And you learned all this from your coursework?" Erich demanded, though his sarcasm lacked a certain bite.
Jessa shrugged. "I took a course in linguistics - Etymology, actually. But I became fascinated for a time after I read an old article about Native North Americans. The author had studied a vast number of pure or no less than fifty percent genetic natives, categorizing them by reservation born and raised or urban, and by whether they learned either their native language or a pan-tribal language from birth, or later by schooling or through cultural programs, or never at all. Or if their native language was lost forever. No native speakers or recordings or anything. His premise was that they all had a recognizable accent, major components of which were present regardless of regional English accents, and which often overrode any regional accent. For example, he cited a subject that was born and raised in Brooklyn, had never been exposed to his native Sioux language but had more accentual characteristics in common with an Inuit born and raised in Northern Alaska, than a fellow Caucasian Brookliner. He had a co-author whose specialty was around the biology of speech mechanics and brain language centers and the physical production of vocal sounds. Anyway, he was able to discount any physiological basis for the accents. Not to mention that fine permutations of the accents could be shown to vary from one tribal language to another. He was about to expand his research to Latin and South America when the pandemic hit," she added softly. "I found the correlation to our situation fascinating and trained myself to listen for accents." She ducked her head. "It was the first thing that drew me to Peter - Pietro. He had a strong Italian accent, because his ancestors came to English more recently than most of us."
"Even if all that is true," Erich demanded, "If my English is so perfect, why would you decide that my original language is German? I could be a Russian or a Brit, passing as a Berliner."
Jessa kept her face a straight as possible, denying the urge to smirk. "Because you speak French with a German accent," she replied, then hurried on. "And when you speak German, it's flawless, not like someone who learned it as a second language."
"I thought you didn't speak German," Erich retorted, though it was to Torah that he threw a glower.
Jessa raised her hands defensively. "I don't, save a word or two in passing. And I'm only slightly better at reading it. But when I was in the midst of my language fascination, I taught myself to listen for sounds, not words or grammar."
Torah waved a hand between them, trying to disrupt an argument before it grew. "So what did Drau's history say? He's no fool. There will be fact mixed in with fantasy. Fewer lies to keep straight."
Jessa closed her eyes, picturing mental screen shots. "His father, Frederich, was a council member also. Bunch of Rhineland in hops and wine grapes, then he put the land under an Elite overseer and moved even further north to invest in shipping. Met his wife there, raised Drau there and in Dusseldorf when the council was in session."
"And you don't believe any of that?" Torah asked.
Jessa shook her head. "I didn't just look up facts. I mean, it's the internet, after all. Even if it's dark or classified by the Council, rumors abound. Frederich was considered an absentee landlord even before he joined the council. He was gone more often than he was at his manor on the lands and after he moved north, same thing. He invested in shipping, but no one could accuse him of micromanaging his investments. His absences were charged to Council business, but they were far greater than those of other Council members who lived outside Dusseldorf, including your father." When Torah scowled, she hurried on.
"His wife's history was quite vague. She was supposedly from the area of Bremen, orphaned at a young age, and very reclusive under the premise that her parents perished under traumatizing circumstances but I could find no corroborating information. The gist of it was that no one was surprised when she didn't appear in public very often, even on the few occasions that Frederich made appearances at his shipyards or Rhine valley manor, or even at his digs in Dusseldorf. No one was very concerned, because Drau - presumably with his mother - was keeping up and out-performing at his program work. When he turned twelve, he was a constant shadow of his father, again pretty much as was expected."
"So, what do you think?" Torah asked.
"I need more time..."
"I'm asking your opinion, not a recitation of facts."
