Stopover
by Philip J. Lees
“My name eez Raoul. Can I buy you a drink?”
No, really. That’s just how he said it. Like a guy from some bad old vid. I looked him up and down. Mostly down. His head came just about up to my shoulders, which meant that my main assets were right on a level with his eyeballs. That seemed to suit him fine. I pulled my shoulders back, took a breath and treated him to a swivel on the barstool so he could take in the view. Man! that felt good.
“Sure,” I said.
“Splendid, splendid. What eez your pleasure?”
After Stygis 12 any male would be an improvement; even that twisted runt behind the bar would have done if nothing better came along. Raoul was short, balding and had one of those thin moustaches that look as if they’re painted on, but he was definitely male. I smiled.
“I’ll have another beer,” I said.
“A beautiful lady like you should be drinking champagne.” He probably thought he was managing a seductive smile but he was wrong. It was a leer. I know a leer when I see one. Anyway, he didn’t insist. He climbed onto the stool next to me as the barman twisted the caps off and poured.
“Salud!” He clinked his glass against mine. “What’s your name, beautiful lady?” He was trying to look me in the face but his eyes kept straying to my neckline. I couldn’t blame him. I’m no Cleopatra, though one of the girls on Stygis told me my features have a ‘primitive grandeur’, whatever the hell that means.
“Lesley. Call me Les.” Thank you, Ma! Imagine how that went down on Stygis. Four years in an all-female rehab center with a name like Les. I hadn’t stood a chance. Oh well, it wasn’t so bad after I got used to it. At least I’m big enough to take care of myself most times. Strong enough to draw a line when I absolutely had to.
“A beautiful name for a beautiful woman. Splendid.” His insincerity was touching, and so was he. I took his hand off my knee.
“Naughty Raoul!” I gave him the smile and the sideways look and he shifted on the stool.
Raoul’s attempts at conversation were so painful to witness that I only made him buy me two drinks before I took him back to my cabin. He drooled a bit over my splendids and after that it was all over very quickly. Never mind. At least he was a male.
I minded not at all when Raoul left right afterwards, but I still couldn’t sleep, so I dressed again, went back to the bar and got chatting with the guy behind it. Despite his weird appearance and the fact that he talked like a bullfrog with laryngitis he was likeable in his own way and I started to relax for the first time since I got to the Suzy Q.
“Been here long, Freddie?” I asked him at one point.
“Coupla years. Long enough.” He’d started to clear up, but not in a way that said he wanted me to leave. “How about you. How long were you up for?”
“Twenty-five five. How did you know?”
He shrugged lopsided shoulders. “Sometimes I can sense these things.”
Twenty-five five. That’s five years for me and twenty-five back on earth. Relativistic time is a wonderful thing. I hadn’t realized until they handed me one out that a life sentence isn’t for the criminal, it’s for the victim and the victim’s family. Thanks to Einstein the courts can now dispense compassion and retribution at the same time.
Anyway, with good behavior I was out on parole in less than four. Still twenty-five back home, though. They planned my return trip that way. No cheating on the retribution. Of course, in my case it made no sense because the victim’s family was just me.
At least Freddie hadn’t asked me what I was in for. I appreciated the tact, but I liked him, so I told him anyway.
He shook his head. “That’s bad,” he said. Not being judgmental, just stating a fact.
“I know,” I sighed. “It was a crazy time, Freddie. My man had walked out, the rent was due and she just wouldn’t stop squalling, no matter what I did. I just lost it there for a minute. I took her to the hospital, but it was too late.” Why was I telling him all this? It must have been the drink making me maudlin and now some dust had got into my eyes. I wiped them with a tissue.
“So where are you headed?”
“Don’t know yet. You probably know how it is. They shipped me here, gave me an open ticket. I can be back on Earth in six months if I want to.”
“And do you?”
“Freddie, I just don’t know. Anybody I knew back then will have forgotten all about me. Anyone who hasn’t won’t want to know me, anyway. What’s there for me? Just the bad memories.”
He must have thought that the bottom of my empty glass wasn’t interesting enough for me to be staring into it like that, so he filled it again. I thanked him. It looked as if it was going to be a long night.
Lesley's Diary I
Out here there are too many stars. So many, they fill the sky. Not like home, where you can play 'join the dots' and try to make out the constellations. (Hell! that never looked like a scorpion to me, anyway.) But here the sky's full of them, like a mist. You can imagine any picture you want. There's nothing to get hold of. Sometimes they feel so close it's like I'm drowning in the light. Other times they're all so far away the loneliness is unbearable.
This is my new diary. The old one had the notes I made on Stygis, but when the day came to leave I burned everything I'd written. A fresh start, I thought. A new page.
Here is just a stopover, anyway. They shipped me to this station, left me with a one-way ticket to anywhere. Earth is six months away. Or twenty-five years, depending which way you look at it. Shall I go back? If not, where?
#
I left Freddie's quarters in the early 'morning', station time. He was kind, tender, considerate and, all things considered, someone I didn't at all mind waking up beside. The only reason I left when I did was because I felt like some privacy for a while. There was almost none of that where I had spent the last few years and it was something I was learning to enjoy all over again.
Anyway, I was feeling much better than I had the night before. Better about myself; better about my future. I napped for an hour, having nothing else to do, and then went in search of breakfast.
As soon as I left my cabin it was obvious that something was going on. Station people were moving purposefully from place to place with worried expressions on their faces, trying not to show they were in a hurry. I couldn't remember when I'd last seen someone in a hurry. Certainly not on Stygis, where you tried to drag everything out for as long as possible, just to use up the time. So I speeded up myself, thinking that the gossip was sure to have reached Fast Freddie's Bar and Grill before I got there.
I wasn't wrong. Freddie wasn't there himself, but there was a young girl behind the bar, blonde hair, skin as pale as mine was dark, flipping eggs on a skillet while fielding questions from the small crowd that had assembled.
"They say there's an unscheduled ship coming up the needle."
"Unscheduled? How can that be? There's no such thing as an unscheduled ship."
"That's what I heard."
It made no sense to me, either. I'd read a lot on Stygis, not just in the classes they made us sit through, but also for myself, since there wasn't a whole lot else to do. Time was a plentiful commodity there, like I said, and I'd spent some of it reading up on the Suzy Q, knowing that's where I'd be dumped when I got out. We were in orbit about a special kind of black hole that somehow connected hundreds of different points throughout the galaxy. You could send a ship down the needle and in what seemed like only a few minutes it could travel to another needle and come out in a different station, light years away. If you didn't get lost, that is. Nobody knew what happened to the ones that got lost.
If you think from what I've said that I really understood how all this works, then you're quite wrong. One thing I did know, though, was that once a ship left the needle at one station it started transmitting a signal that was keyed to the destination station's com frequency. That way, it could lock on to a point of reference to help the pilots, auto and human, find their way through. It also meant that the ship would be expected. There were no unscheduled arrivals.
Once the hubbub had died down a bit and it was clear that no more information would be forthcoming for the time being, I sat down and ordered a coffee.
"Is that a hamburger?" I asked the girl, pointing to the object on the grill.
"If you want to call it that." She smiled. "Contains no life forms. It says so on the packet."
"Guess I'll try one anyway. Two eggs, toast. And more coffee."
"You got it."
The 'burger' wasn't half bad, in fact. I thought about the mystery ship as I chewed. I knew that ships traveled up the needle very slowly, because the tidal effects in there were something ferocious, so it would probably be another hour before the thing docked, whatever it was.
And what could that be? If it couldn't be identified as a scheduled flight there was only one real possibility. I began to understand the worried looks I'd seen on people's faces on the way from my cabin.
After a lazy breakfast, I took a slow stroll around the station, just to stretch my legs, and when I got back to the cabin Raoul was outside the door. Odd. I'd marked him down as the 'Wham, bam, thank you ma'am!' type. It turned out he didn't so much want to see me again as wish he'd never seen me at all. So what's new?
He told me one of the security people had been asking him about me. He didn't want any trouble, he said. Goodbye, Raoul.
Lesley's Diary II
What the hell is going on? This place is starting to make me weird. When I left Stygis I felt positive, looking ahead, new life and all that kind of junk. Now I'm here, in the middle of god knows where, and strange things are happening. I don't want it. It's nothing to do with me. I just wish they would leave me alone to get on with whatever I decide to do.
I'm out, I'm clean, I haven't done anything to violate parole. What do they want with me now? I'd better sit tight, see what happens. Maybe it's all a mistake. Maybe it isn't me they want, after all.
#
They came for me after about half an hour. I don't know what took them so long. Maybe they'd been tracking me back and forth. Two of them, young, uniformed, smart, expressionless, but at least they were polite.
"Ms. Smith, could you come with us, please?" the dark one said, avoiding my eyes.
I shrugged, trying to hide my nervousness while hating myself for feeling that way. I'd done nothing wrong.
"Okay. Where are we going?"
"Station commander's office."
"What for?"
"You'll find out when you get there."
I had the feeling he didn't know, so I didn't push it.
They led me along a series of corridors, through a door marked 'Station Personnel Only', then more corridors, until the shorter one knocked at a door.
"Ms. Smith, sir," he announced when it opened, then ushered me in.
The Station Commander certainly did himself proud. The first thing I noticed was the carpet, thick and dark red. I hadn't seen a carpet of any kind for a long time. Then there was the desk that looked as if it was made of real wood. Must have cost him a fortune to have it shipped out here. There were holograms of Earth on the walls. I recognized the Matterhorn, Mount St. Helen's, Kilimanjaro, I think, though it could have been Mount Fuji. This guy liked mountains. Then there was some lake I couldn't identify. I could have looked at them for longer, but the man behind the desk stood up and came over to me with his hand out. I took it, feeling foolish.
"Ms. Smith. Good of you to come. I'm Admiral Clarke, Station Commander." He had neatly parted silver hair and a politician's smile.
He gestured towards another man who had remained seated. A gray man in a gray uniform.
"This is Captain Thomas, my chief of security." Thomas managed a thin smile, too, though it looked as if it hurt him to do it.
"Pleased to meet you," I lied.
"I'll come straight to the point, since you must be wondering why you're here. I mean, here in my office. We, er, all know why you're here on the station." He suddenly seemed embarrassed.
I couldn't think of anything to say, so I said nothing, waiting for him to do what he had said and get to the point.
"The fact is, we appear to have a problem and we were hoping you could help us."
"Why me?" It seemed a sensible question.
"Well, we received a message about you. No, not really a message." He seemed to be having trouble finding the words and it was clear he didn't like that. He rubbed his earlobe between thumb and forefinger, then caught himself doing it and put both hands behind his back. "The fact is, it appears that somebody wants to communicate with you."
"Who?"
"We don't really know. Perhaps you'd better come and see for yourself, if you wouldn't mind?" Why was he being so nice about it? Now I was really on my guard.
"I suppose I could." What else did I have to do, anyway?
"Thank you, Ms. Smith. Shall we go right along?"
He held the door open for me and walked beside me as we set off along the corridor. Thomas and the two juniors fell in behind. They all walked in step and it was hard for me not to follow suit, but I managed it. To hell with them and their military ways!
I hadn't really got my bearings, but as the paint work got drearier and the decorations fewer I had the feeling we were heading into the downside of the station, towards the base of the needle. Clarke kept up an intermittent commentary as we went along, as if he felt he had to act as a tour guide. Perhaps he'd done it so many times it was just a reflex.
"All this section is heavily shielded, of course. And there are no viewports, as you see. We don't want people looking into the hole. It has ... unpleasant effects."
I wasn't really listening, but I gathered we must be on the holeward side of the station, as I'd guessed. At last we stopped in front of what looked like the door to an airlock with two more guards standing outside looking serious and attentive. One of my junior escorts went to open it.
"Here we are," Clarke said, amiably. Then Thomas spoke for the first time. He wasn't smiling at all now.
"Ms. Smith, you have probably heard that an unscheduled ship arrived here today. You are about to see that ship. I must ask you to keep this to yourself. Is that clear?"
What was clear was the menace in his voice. His tone was mild, but the threat was there. I nodded. My throat suddenly felt dry. What in the world was I doing here?
We went through the airlock into a large hangar. In the center of the floor was a silvery object, a flattened sphere about three meters wide by two high. Its surface was completely smooth and regular, with nothing to show how it had been put together. On the left side, the metallic looking material blended into something that looked transparent, but from where I was standing I couldn't see inside. Overall, it looked like a squashed space helmet. The rest of the hangar was empty.
Clarke led me around towards the transparent section, which I supposed was the front, and after a few more steps I could see part of the interior. I couldn't see any consoles or controls of any kind, but the inside was the same silvery color as the outside. There was some kind of narrow bench in the middle, with nobody sitting on it.
The admiral had got some way ahead of me, towards the other side of the ship, or whatever it was. When I stopped, he beckoned for me to keep moving.
I was watching his expression, trying to figure out what was going on, but just as I passed right in front of the ship something flickered in the corner of my eye. I stopped again. Clarke was looking smug. I turned around. Thomas was expressionless, but the juniors looked nervous.
With my eyes on the ship I took a step back towards the airlock. There was that flicker again. I reversed the movement, more slowly this time, but I still missed it. I'd passed the point too quickly. I moved just my head, as slowly as I could, and this time I caught it! A scattering of colored points that suddenly formed into an image. There was a figure sitting on the bench, but it could only be seen from exactly the right angle.
I felt the breath go out of me, as if someone had punched me in the belly, and I was suddenly light headed. The only thing that kept me on my feet was that I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing me faint. I nearly did, though. I nearly dropped where I stood. The person sitting on the bench was me!
#
There was a kind of kitchen further down the corridor and they took me there to recover. Admiral Clarke insisted that I sat down and drank a cup of tea. Tea! I needed vodka, at least, but I didn't think it would be a good time to ask for it.
"So," he said, "this is as much a surprise to you as it was to us?"
"You're not kidding, Admiral."
"I'm sorry if it was a disturbing experience for you, but you will understand that we wanted to be sure."
"What? You thought I might know something about this? Have I suddenly been promoted from ex con to secret agent or something?" In fact, the tea was making me feel better. "How the hell did that get in there?"
"We don't know, but we're hoping that you can help us find out."
Then Thomas took a step forward. That man moved silently. Even his clothes made no sound as he bent down to where I was sitting.
"We'd like you to sit in that seat," he said quietly.
"No way. Get somebody else to do it."
"We've tried that. Nothing happens. I've even tried it myself. There's no danger."
"I'll believe that when I see it."
"You will, if necessary." He cleared his throat, the first human thing he'd done since I met him. "Ms. Smith, I don't approve of who you are and what you've done, but you've paid for that now. I can't force you to sit in that seat if you don't want to. However, I can make you an offer."
"Go ahead, if it makes you feel better." I finished the tea and put the cup down, hard. I was still feeling a bit shaky.
"You are on parole for another sixteen months. You have nowhere special to go and nothing special to do. We can help you with all those things."
"I'm listening."
"I will sit in that seat again myself, so you can see there is no danger. Then it's your turn. You sit there until whatever happens, happens. Maybe nothing will happen at all. We'll set a time limit, let's say two hours. After that, either way, you're completely free, off parole, with a commendation from my service that will help you get a job anywhere you choose. We'll extend your ticket to give you unlimited travel for one year. The only condition is that you never talk about it to anyone. Think about it."
I thought about it. Then I thought about it again. What had I got to lose, after all. This was the best deal I was ever likely to get. I was sure they weren't telling me everything and there was no doubt that it was a gamble, but what the hell!
"Okay, I'll do it," I said. "But after lunch. The condemned woman wants a last slap up meal. And you're paying for it. Deal?"
He almost smiled again, but it was too painful. "Deal," he said.
#
There was a hatch at the back of the ship that fit so snugly you couldn't even see the outline when it was closed. But it was open now. Thomas was sitting on the bench with his back to me, not moving. After a few seconds he got up again.
"You see," he said. "Nothing. Now it's your turn." He ushered me to the bench as if he was showing me into a box at the opera. "Two hours, then if nothing has happened you're free to go."
I took a deep breath. "Let's get it over with." I smiled a confidence I didn't feel, then walked round to the front and sat down before I could chicken out.
That other me in the image wasn't visible from anywhere else except exactly in front of the thing, not even right behind. It wasn't a hologram. Nobody knew what it was. Earlier on I'd spent a few minutes trying to memorize the position and posture of the seated figure. They'd told me to try and sit the same way. It might make a difference. The bench was too narrow for my behind and was neither warm nor cold. It was only thinly padded, but my own natural padding made up for that and I thought I could sit there for as long as it took without being too uncomfortable. I shifted around a bit, moved my arms and legs until I got as close to the right pose as I could remember.
For a while nothing happened, until my apprehension faded and I started to feel ridiculous. I was about to open my mouth and ask "What time does the show start?" when suddenly I heard a voice.
You are ... are here ... you are here? It was my own voice, but from far, far away. At the same time it was right inside my head.
"Who are you?" I blurted it out and I sensed the sudden activity behind me. Without moving my head I waved a hand to tell them to stay back.
We are communicating ... in ideas ... not words. Your brain ... makes ... the words. You think ... not speak.
Okay, I could try that. Good, came the answer, we hear ... you.
Why me? How did you find me?
We followed ... you ... here. You can ... help ... us. We need ... you.
This was weird, but it was getting easier.
Need me? Why me?
You killed ... your ... young ... when danger ... threatened. We understand. You understand ... us. We would ... do ... the same.
No! You DON'T understand.
Yes. We would ... eat/consume/recycle ... but ... you cannot. We understand. You understand.
"No!"
Please help ... we ...
But I was up, out of the seat, pushing past Thomas and the others, running out of the door, to the airlock. I clutched the edge of the bulkhead, bowed my head against my hands and, for the first time in four years, I wept.
#
I went back, of course. They didn't exactly make me do it, but they made it nearly impossible for me not to. They took me to my cabin and left me to myself for a while, then Clarke came back, alone. The fact that he called on me this time made it clear how important this whole thing was to him.
"We have realized for a long time," he said, "that if we were ever going to contact an intelligent alien race it would very likely be on one of these stations. Now we have made such a contact. Or at least, you have."
"No kidding!" I said. "What the hell is that thing in there?"
"I'm afraid we weren't quite honest with you." Well, surprise, surprise! "We already had reason to believe it was a communications device. One or two of the people who tried sitting there reported hearing some kind of voice, but it made no sense. We thought that since your image was included, you might have better luck."
He frowned. "Obviously, the experience was distressing to you. Do you think you could tell me about it?"
"All I can tell you, Admiral, is that they eat their ... what was the word? ... their young."
"What?" That had got to him, I could see that. Good!
"They kill them, then they eat them. Eat. Consume. Recycle." Those three words were still echoing in my head. "But only when there's danger. For some reason, they thought I, of all people, might be sympathetic."
"Oh dear. Oh dear." Saying that twice was obviously a big deal for him. "And that was it? Nothing else?"
"Well, I did get the impression they were asking for help."
"Oh dear." Three times. He must have been practically in shock. "Did they say what kind of help?"
"No. That was when I left."
"And I can understand that you would be unwilling to try again." He sighed. "Ms. Smith, I thank you and I am sorry for what you have gone through." He reached into an inside pocket, pulled out a long envelope and handed it to me. "These are for you. Our agreement."
I opened the envelope. Inside was a gold plastic ticket with my name embossed on it and a letter with the stamp of the security service. I didn't read it, didn't need to. Damn! Why were they being so decent about it?
"Of course, if you did feel able to attempt further communication ... ," he didn't sound disconcerted any more and had recovered his politician's smile. "It would be a great opportunity to learn more. Maybe our only chance." He stopped, seeing my expression, and stood to leave.
"Yes, well. Think about it and if you do change your mind, just let me know."
We shook hands like the best of enemies and he walked out, leaving me there looking at those documents and wondering ... wondering.
Lesley's Diary III
I'll do it. I'll talk to the aliens again. I went to Freddie's, looking for escape and quiet, and found neither. This was all supposed to be secret, but I felt like everyone was looking at me.
I did find Freddie. I wanted to tell him all about it but thought I'd better not, even though, being Freddie, he probably knew already. I just said I had a difficult choice to make. "And I'm not used to having choices." He just said one thing.
"What if you don't do it?"
Well, that's it, isn't it. What if I don't do it? How will I feel then, never knowing? That's what made my mind up. On the way back here I told a security woman to pass a message to Clarke. They should be here soon.
#
The second time was easier, I suppose because I knew what to expect. I talked for a while with the alien, whose name I could hear in my head but couldn't come close to saying. It sounded a bit like Tiktikka, with all the letters pronounced separately. She had just as much difficulty with Lesley, which made me feel better. At some point my vision started to go fuzzy and she told me to close my eyes. When I did that I could see what she saw.
She led me through their city, a maze of islands and canals. High overhead heavy clouds glared with an angry red light. At first, Tiktikka's swaying gait made me dizzy and my viewpoint was closer to the ground than I was used to. She looked from left to right, showing me low, domed buildings and pylons supporting the cables that connected them. Occasionally, she stopped to exchange clicks with passers by. I couldn't understand, but I was able to see the intelligence in their eyes. Tiktikka's people looked a lot like newts, though they stood upright when they were on land and their arms and legs were longer. I saw one pedaling some kind of bicycle, its tail coiled up in a carrier behind the seat, and far away on the Suzy Q my other self chuckled at the sight.
When we first plunged into the water, I felt myself take a deep breath, even though I knew I didn't need it. Beneath the surface we moved like a fish. The speed and agility were exhilarating and scary, all at once.
Pay attention ... now. Important.
We landed on the bottom and crawled into one end of a long, rectangular structure. Inside the light was dim, but I had no trouble seeing through Tiktikka's eyes. We were in a corridor that ran the length of the building, with openings off to the right at regular intervals.
Breeding ... hall, Tiktikka told me. Oh really?
We looked through one opening into a small cubicle in which two amphibians were coiled loosely around each other. They undulated rhythmically, but without urgency. If this was sex it looked about as exciting as me and Raoul. After a few minutes the larger one with the brighter colored crest (Male, Tiktikka said) detached himself and, with one flick of his tail, was past us and heading down the corridor. Definitely like Raoul.
You watch ... now. I watched.
Almost immediately, something began to emerge from beneath the female's tail. A series of translucent globules, like a string of pearls.
Now ... important!
Before the string was completely out, the female seemed to be taken over by some kind of frenzy. Her head snapped around and she started biting at one pearl after another.
Afraid ... must eat.
It was terrible to watch. At one moment the female seemed to be trying to leave the cubicle. In the next, something pulled her back to bite and swallow some more. Eventually, no pearls were left and at last she could depart. She did so, not with a flick of her tail as her mate had done, but crawling wearily along the floor.
I could feel some of Tiktikka's anguish.
Instinct ... when danger ... threatens ... must eat ... eggs/young.
So when Tiktikka said they ate their young, it wasn't as if they were real babies, like ... never mind. She explained that the eggs were left to hatch by themselves and most of the young weren't expected to make it anyway. Those that survived for the few months until they grew legs and could crawl on to dry land were brought up communally. It worked for them.
All through their evolution it had served their species to eat up their own eggs when they were threatened. It was a reflex. Better that than let the predators get them. They could just go off some place else and lay a whole lot more. They were a fertile lot. Hell, I eat eggs. That's not so bad.
But where was the danger?
Sun ... change ... bad. We have ... time ... many years. We leave ... go ... good place. But ... now ... all ... afraid.
She told me more, though I didn't understand all of it. Lately, they all felt threatened, all the time. Their plans for evacuation were well under way, but in the meantime their climate was messed up and there were weird things in the sky at night. They were scared, so they'd lay their eggs, then eat them. It was an instinct.
Some clever ... not do this. But ... not clever ... are more.
Right. Why should you be different?
We have ... many years. But ... until ... we go ... not enough ... young.
They were afraid that by the time they were ready to evacuate there wouldn't be enough of them left to make it worthwhile.
So what did they want from us? What did they want from me?
You ... help. Tell us ... good. Tell us ... wait ... hope.
I had a hard time understanding and some of the concepts didn't come through at all, but it sounded like what they wanted was religion, though Tiktikka didn't put it that way. Anyway, they wanted a promise of help from outside, some intervention that, if not divine or supernatural, would at least be alien. Something to give them hope. Some kind of savior from another place to prove to them that they had somewhere else to go and to tell them to hang in there until it was time to leave. They'd been monitoring some of our colonies for years (Listening ... is easy, Tiktikka said. Talking ... is difficult) but hadn't made contact, mainly because of a distrust of land dwellers. But eventually they decided they had to do something and they'd chosen me.
Great choice, Tiktikka. But either they didn't have sarcasm or theirs was different from ours.
We know ... this ... is bad. Not bad ... before ... but ... bad ... now. You ... understand. You can ... help.
And of course, I did understand, though I didn't want to admit it, not even to myself. That guilt I'd been hiding from for so long was still there, just waiting for the right moment to pop out and surprise me. Their guilt was the same as mine.
I'll try, I said.
You ... will come?
I will come.
Release ... ship ... will return ... automatically ... here. Soon?
Soon, I promised.
#
My backside was numb and my body was stiff all over when I finally stood up from the bench. I had no idea how long I'd been there.
By the time I'd turned around, Thomas was at my side. Clarke must have got bored waiting and left, but waiting and watching was Thomas' bread and butter.
"What happened," he asked.
For some reason he didn't scare me any more. I looked him in the eye.
"Looks like I've found a job," I said.
"A job? What kind of job?"
"God," I said.
"Don't joke with me, Ms. Smith."
"Who's joking? Well, maybe not God. Maybe just a prophet. I'll tell you about it later." Let him wait a bit longer, it would do him good.
"Right now," I said, "you can have one of your people lead me to Freddie's. What I need is a stiff drink and a lie down."
Lesley's Diary IV
Admiral Clarke called me to his office one last time.
"Good luck, Ambassador Smith," he said. He wasn't joking. They're sending two volunteers along and they had to give me some sort of title that would fit into their hierarchy. 'Ambassador Smith', how about that?
The few things I have are packed and ready. As for me, I'm as ready as I'll ever be, with my private, or almost private ship, my attendants and my one way ticket to wherever, for however long. Maybe I can do some good this time.
I went to Freddie's for breakfast and to say goodbye to Freddie himself. I kissed him on the forehead in front of everybody--he really is such a sweet guy.
"The usual?" he asked me.
"Yeah." Then I had second thoughts.
"Better hold the eggs," I said.
- End -
© Copyright Philip J. Lees 2001