"Now this is important. I want you all to listen and we'll be done in just a minute. Dennis," and the boy looked up with questions on his face. "Put these on."

"But I already learned to read," he said, handling the Fast Learns.

"This is something different. Put them on please."

He did, looking back up at me as I touched the computer monitor. The program icon blinked and Dennis frowned. A minute later he took the headset off.

"You're up next," I told Linell. She put them on and did the same thing, grinning crookedly when she took the sets off, Margaret just had a puzzled expression when she was done. I smiled as I realized they were free, the programming having been removed and setting them on their own path for the first time in their lives. Now we'd find out who they were.

"What was that all about?" Dennis asked. "Did we learn something?"

"I guess we'll just have to wait and see," I told him.

"I don't feel any smarter," the boy said.

"Don't worry about it. Now, who wants a cookie?"

They forgot about the incident while they ate and we sat down for their studies. Now that they could read I had them learning other things. Arithmetic was taught by doing piloting tables, speed/distance calculations were the most interesting to them as I put the monitor on to track our flight, giving the one with the closest answer a ride on the jeep. Of course the winner had to plot out the course in detail, with the help of the others. It soon turned into a team effort where they'd compare notes and help each other out with the figuring. Dennis had trouble concentrating after he did the hard parts so the girls carried part of his load doing the easier, mundane plotting.

Reading was easy. Just had to bring up a story and turn them loose, all of them taking turns reading out loud, cooperating by reading a little then turning it over to the next in line.

Writing was not much fun for them. They just weren't used to it and it made their fingers hurt until they got used to it. Linell liked to just draw and I had to keep her attention on the work at hand, Margaret liked it and was soon trying to write short stories and reading them to me when one was done. Dennis, he did okay. What I found he liked to do was the load and balances. He did it and learned his lessons by writing out the weights and figuring out their leverages and relative balances on paper. He didn't see the need to write the small reports I had him do but he did because I asked him to, putting up a bit of fuss at first then slowly doing it without a problem.

They didn't seem to be any different the first few days as they studied, but then the arguments started. For a while I had doubts that removing the parts that made them cooperative wasn't the best idea after all. I'd step in and put a stop to the fighting before it went physical then put them in separate corners while they cooled down. Afterward, they'd make up and kiss, sometimes more. Once, after Dennis and both girls got into a screaming match, they came out of their corners to hug and kiss, the girls getting a little serious and Dennis joining in.

It was two on one after that. Boy on girl on girl. Girl on girl on boy or what ever other combinations they'd come up with. Some were physically impossible, that's the only way to describe what I saw but forgiveness was a special thing for them and a delight to watch.

We were heading along a new route for me, one that the manager at SamaBond said would give me a couple tenths of a percent improvement in profit, that added up fast at our hauling weights, and I agreed. The mountains were especially good for capricious winds, just twisted them into tumblers and funnelers that had us skating and slewing all the way up the narrow valley as we set up the approach. I was controlling the load and Andre the tug, working together to keep the barge behind us and not coming up alongside to turn us into a squack smear. Sweating buckets by the time we landed we just sat in the pilot seats until our nerves calmed down.

"You can come in now," I gasped into the intercom and heard the hatch open followed by a herd of pounding feet.

"We were so scared, Adam," Linell sobbed out. "Don't make us stay in the cabin any more. I want to be with you."......(cont)