Margo was looking at him in wide-eyed horror.
”Let me guess,” Kit said drolly. “You thought time scouting was a way to avoid college?”
She didn’t answer, but he could read it in her eyes.
”Kid, if you want to be a time scout, the first thing you have to become is a scholar. Scouts are a rough and ready bunch-we have to be-but most of us started life as historians or classics professors or philosophers or anthropologists. We’re the best-educated bunch of roughnecks this side of eternity.”
Malcolm laughed. “I have a Ph.D. in Roman antiquities.”
Margo sat back and crossed her arms. “This is maddening. If I’d wanted a Ph.D., I’ve have gone to school. All I want to do is explore neat places!”
Kit started to say something that would have been entirely too heartfelt, but Malcolm beat him to the punch.
”Fame and fortune and adventure?” he asked in a voice dry as fine wine.
She flushed
Kit felt like cheering. “That’s fine,” he told her. “But you have to pay the dues. And we have an agreement, Margo. You do what I tell you, when I tell you, or you don’t set that first pretty pink toe across the threshold of a gate.”
She pouted at the ATLS. Then sighed “All right. I’ll go to the library. Isn’t there anything to this job besides studying?”
”Sure. Kit sat back. “Plenty, in fact. How much martial arts training have you had?”
She shrugged. “High school stuff: I have a belt.”
”What kind, which discipline?”
”Brown belt, Tai Kwan Do.”
Kit grunted. All flying kicks and damn near no full contact sparring, not compared to what she’d need. Tai Kwan Do spent too much time “pulling” its punches short to give a student a taste of what it was like to hit-or be hit. He saw the chance for an object lesson that might just sink home.