Chapter Two
For no good reason I could imagine I awoke around seven, so I went to the cafeteria to tank up on coffee and have breakfast to get rid of the not-enough-sleep jitters.
Nobody I knew was there yet, and that suited me just fine. I didn't feel like "sharing", "talking", or even having company at breakfast.
The steadily-moving line of strangers with trays provided a comforting atmosphere of anonymity. I didn't dawdle over the food. My mood was such that I wanted to be out of there before anyone I knew arrived.
I began to wonder if coming to lab two had been such a good idea, after all. As soon as that doubt had settled in, another began forming.
It occurred to me that sometimes the subconscious and conscious minds disagree on how to handle matters. Could be that my sub was placing me in a situation wherein eventually having to discuss matters was extremely likely.
That led me to wonder whether there had been more to my feelings about Doris than I cared to admit, which in turn reminded me of what I've told so many other people along the line: "When you can form the question, you have half the answer."
No matter. I wasn't going to discuss a damned thing with anyone after a long drive and having only 3 hours of sleep. I finished up and headed to Farley's lab.
Farley was already there. "You're late," he said flatly. He wasn't referring to the time.
"I'm also tired and cranky and you're obsessive," I said, just as flatly. "I can't be your only reason for being on the payroll, and a month delay won't end the world."
"Shows how little you know. I'll fill you in when Erin arrives. No point in explaining everything twice."
"Oh, I'm fine," I said, "How about you? Nice to see you again, too."
"My social graces are reserved for the deserving. Coffee's ready, so make yourself at home while I finish setting up. Know anything about laser fusion?"
I answered as I poured coffee. "I must have missed that class at Starfleet Academy. I'll bet it has something to do with lasers and fusion, though."
"How cute. Even in a foul mood, he attempts humor. I'll make a note of that."
I held up his mug and said, "Yeah, you do that. Here, hold this."
Farley took his mug and then took a closer look at me and said, "You look distracted as hell. Are you going to be worth a damn today? Would you rather postpone this?"
"Nah, I'm steady enough for target practice. Got nothing better to do, I guess."
"Yeah, you'd do fine as a target, maybe. Want to talk a little, first?"
"No, thanks, Farley, but I think I'd rather we just get on with things."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. Hi, Erin."
I waved as Erin entered the lab through a side door. She hesitated at the doorway, then came into the room with a slight wave.
Farley pulled up a chair for her at the small table and handed her some papers, instantly forgetting about me and rattling on about the tests he wanted to run.
Erin began to read. After scanning the pages she looked up at Farley and tapped the pile of papers.
"Ed's the subject of all this," she said to Farley, "Why do you need me?"
"I didn't want to make it too easy for him," said Farley.
He was assembling a screen between Erin and me. Once the accordion-style frame opened we could no longer see each other.
"I didn't realize you two knew each other, but we can work around that."
"We don't really know each other..." began Erin, but Farley cut her off.
"Don't worry about trivia. We're going to start with the basics. You'll turn up a symbol card and he'll try to tell me what it is. This videocamera will record everything."
"Farley," I said, "I've already been through this stuff at University of Texas, Dallas. Why not just call them and save some time?"
"I want my own results. I don't know them or their level of competence. Could have been a bunch of students messing around or a real effort. Who knows?"
"I do," I said, "They used cards, objects, pictures, and paragraphs from books. They were skeptical and conscientious. Let's skip the groundwork and go straight to something meaningful."
Farley stood straight and seemed insulted as he asked, "Since when did you become a scientist? What the hell do you know about what's meaningful? You don't even understand what I'm trying to accomplish or why."
Farley's condescending, dismissive tone and attitude irritated me. I watched him turn away and bustle around and only became more irritated.
After a few moments, I answered him.
"Tell you what, Farley. I might understand more if you bothered to discuss things. The fact is I don't much give a lab rat's ass what you're trying to accomplish or why, so fuck your tests. I already know a lot of what I can do."
With that, I rose and headed for the door, saying, "Here's a tip, Farley. Buy yourself some social skills. This lab rat is on permanent sabbatical."
Farley straightened and stared after me for a moment, then shouted, "Sara's not going to like this one damned bit! These tests were her idea!"
I ignored him and waved goodbye at Erin, who was also staring at me. Sara could get with me later if she wanted. I picked up a book at the facility library and headed for my room. I was either going to read or go back to bed.
About halfway to my room I felt a familiar presence behind me and said, "Hi, Sara," as I drifted along.
"How did you know I was here and how did you know it was me and why do you walk when you can float?" she asked from a spot above and behind me.
I stopped and turned to find her lying flat in the air near the high ceiling. She rested her chin on her folded arms as if lying on a bed, her legs crossed at the ankles. Her expression was one of interested amusement.
"You have your own presence," I told her, "A signature. Everybody does. I walk because I've always walked and I'd be noticed if I floated. Flying enhancees are rarities."
"I have my own presence, huh? Can you explain it better than that?"
"Not at the moment. It's just something I do."
Sara let herself drift downward until her face was level with my own.
"So, what did you think of Erin? I think it's great that you two found each other again after so long."
"Erin takes exception to my having been a mercenary. She isn't comfortable with me and she barely said hello in the lab today. I won't count on her company soon, Sara."
Sara gazed at me placidly in silence for a few moments. I gazed back at her and was about to say goodbye and get moving again when she spoke.
"You're really in a rotten mood, aren't you, Ed? Want to talk about things?"
"No, thanks, I don't want to talk about things." I grinned at her. "Besides, with you in the room, how long would I be able to stay on-topic?"
I shouldn't have added the last part. It sounded phony because it was, pure and simple. Sara just looked at me for a moment longer, then said, "Let me know if you change your mind."
She tucked and rolled in mid-air like a swimmer at the wall and headed back the way she'd come without waiting for an answer.
As if to further aggravate me, the door to 319 refused my keycard. I punched the call button and a voice asked the nature of my problem. After explaining, I was told to try it again.
The door lock beeped as the remote controller reset it. It refused my keycard again. The voice then gave me a code to tap into the keypad with my number. No good.
"We can have somebody there in about half an hour," said the voice, "Unless there's an emergency."
"No, there's no emergency," I said, "Take your time and bring a replacement lock."
"Oh, that won't be necessary..." the voice was saying as I ripped the lock off the door.
"Yes, it will," I mumbled, dropping it and reaching into the space it had occupied. I found the red and blue wires and crossed them. The door slid open. I set the controller box in the jamb so that if the door closed I could still get a grip on it and went into my room.
I was stretched out on the bed with my book a few minutes later when a commanding female voice said, "Please stay where you are, sir." It wasn't a request.
The voice belonged to a uniformed guard standing in the doorway. The uniform was Air Force, which made her one of the cadre assigned to the base.
She was about five-ten and looked formidable enough without that Glock pistol in her hands. It wasn't pointing at me, but it wasn't pointing far away from me, either.
"No problem," I said. "I'm pretty comfortable here."
"We're waiting for the Watch Commander," she said, "Those locks are expensive."
"Then the damned things should work properly. Why don't you wait outside? I'll wait in here. Leave the box down there to keep the door from closing all the way."
The woman looked at the box on the floor, then bent to pick up a shard of plastic about two inches long. She placed the shard under the edge of the door and kicked the box out of the doorway.
"Any resistance keeps the door from closing for safety. No need to litter the walkways."
Her radio attached to her epaulet muttered something and she pulled the mike to her face to mutter something back to someone without taking her eyes off me.
A moment later she holstered her Glock and said, "Now I know who you are."
I glanced up at her, shrugged, and said, "Great."
"You're here, but you weren't sent for. You arrived late last night in an old brown Chevy and used a code and callname that nobody but the computer recognized. Your entry authorization came from Sara herself, but no reason for your unannounced visit was given."
She paused as she stepped back to glance down the hallway, then continued, "There's a code letter by your name that means 'do not engage', which means to call Sara if there's a problem."
"Well, by God, you do seem to have a handle on things, ma'am. Why do you suppose that code was placed by my name?"
"I wasn't told and I don't guess."
"Never mind. We both know who put it there and the why of it doesn't matter. Have you actually seen my car or are you just taking someone else's word about it?"
She gave me a slight smile.
"Around here, gossip is usually fairly accurate."
Sara appeared at the door and said, "In this case it is."
She nodded to the guard, who stepped into the hall, then turned to face me.
"Start talking, Ed. What's bothering you?"
"Take the lock out of my next check," I said, "It's money for nothing, anyway, isn't it? It isn't as if I work for it, is it? You ladies have had me in some kind of holding pattern for a couple of years now. On permanent retainer. Always waiting, never called. I'm tired of it, Sara. Play me or let me go."
"Doris said you were becoming difficult. You're bitching about being underemployed, but you turned down a job in the Dallas office. What do you want, Ed?"
"Well, now, a reason to bother getting up in the morning would be a good start. I don't want an office job, Sara. If I did, I'd have had one years ago. When I tried to sign on with Fourth Group, the answer was a flat 'no'. No reason given. When I tried to get with the field units, same answer. Major Phillips was enthusiastic on Wednesday and adamantly against it on Thursday. Why?"
Sara sighed and came over to sit on the end of the bed.
"You aren't a team player, Ed. You'd be a loose cannon on anybody's deck. We can't afford the risk."
"Risk? As in publicity problems if I somehow miss or overlook one or two of the rules?"
"That would be one reason. You tend to shoot from the hip, Ed. You deal with people on a one-to-one basis. This is an organization. Organization members don't make impromptu speeches or go off on their own to deal with things. We're having a hard enough time finding acceptance now that we've gone public. As you said last year, most people see us as deities or devils, but rarely just as people."
She paused, then continued, "Look at the incident at the gas station in Denton. You could have disarmed him and held him for the cops. Instead, he almost died from having a Bic pen shoved through his chest."
"Well, gee, lady, I haven't been bulletproof all my life like you, and I react poorly to being shot at. They'd have arrested him and he'd be out in a few years doing the same damned thing again somewhere. He was a bonafide waste of skin, Sara, and a danger to everyone."
"Didn't you say the same thing about the drunk involved in Erin's wreck?"
"She told you about that, huh? Okay. So what? He was a career drunk driver and a first-class asshole. No loss. This isn't new, Sara. I haven't changed."
"Exactly my point, Ed. You haven't adjusted to your new responsibilities."
It was my turn to sigh.
"Gee. Maybe nobody told me about them when I joined this club. I'm still me, Sara. Enhancement didn't affect my mind that I know of. If I'm such a poor choice, how was it April didn't notice it three years ago?"
"We have to work within the legal system, Ed. We have to work within the legal system. We."
"The system is designed to capture and warehouse rats. The stupidest farmer you'll ever find knows what should be done about rats. The system is a moneymill created to perpetuate the profits of lawyers. Crime thrives because the legal system provides the fertilizer."
"Laws are all that hold civilization together," said Sara.
I snorted at that.
"Simple laws that protect and punish equally build and bind civilizations. Laws drafted in a dead language that require lengthy interpretation simply confuse everybody and provide more employment for lawyers. Early release programs can cut a twenty-year murder sentence down to seven years or less. Someone dies or suffers a painful disability for the rest of his or her life while the one who caused it learns new criminal skills behind bars, then gets released to practice those skills. When they're caught, the lawyers profit again. Lawyers rule the country, Sara. Over eighty percent of all elected and appointed officials have passed the bar somewhere, yet the streets of our glorious civilization aren't safe. Care to comment?"
Sara reiterated, "Without rules, we have nothing, Ed."
I sat up, then stood up.
"Rules without long, nasty teeth are nothing, Sara. We're getting nowhere with all this. Is there something real for me to do? Do I work or do I walk?"
Sara stood and stared at me for a few moments.
"I'll talk with April about it," she said, "Right now I have to meet someone. Can you stick around a few days?"
"I didn't come here with a plan," I said, "I came here to find one or make one."
Sara accepted that as an answer, I guess. She nodded and left the room. I followed her to the door and looked down the hall. My guard was also gone, but the promised door-repairman was approaching.
Something about Sara's parting demeanor set the alarm bells off in my head. I gathered my baggage and stepped into the hall.
As the repairman drew near, I grinned and said, "Rent out my room. I've had a better offer."
The repairman grinned back at me.
"The blonde or the brunette?"
"Classified," I laughed, "But probably only until the news hits the grapevine, right?"
"You got that right. This place is like a damned soap opera sometimes."
As he started working, I began walking toward the main hall's parking area entrance. If Sara really had a lunch meeting and nobody had orders to specifically inform her about my leaving, I might have as much as half an hour to get topside before she found out I was gone.
The automatic doors were triggered open by the approach of my badge. So far, so good. I wondered if I was being unnecessarily paranoid, after all.
I'd left the car doors unlocked as required for safety and inspection reasons and the keys were still in the ignition. I tossed my bags in the back seat and turned the key.
I saw nobody else until I arrived at the big elevator doors. A guard there checked my badge and ID, then led me onto the lift platform and rode up with me.
The exterior blast doors opened and I drove off the lift to nervously wait for the ramp door above to open. A guard there took my badge and had me sign out.
'There are too many doors in this place,' I thought. 'It's taking too damned long to get out of here.'
I checked my watch and found that less than fifteen minutes had passed since Sara had left me in my room. It didn't seem to help to know that.
The overhead sign said, 'Wait for ramp door to open completely', but my front wheels were on the ramp before it was two-thirds open.
The guard had seen impatience often enough to ignore it if a driver wasn't too prematurely on the ramp.
I contained my impulse to rush toward the sunlight above and cruised up the ramp at something near the posted speed limit of five miles per hour.
In my outside rearview mirror I saw the "bat" following me out to take its position above my car.
I seemed to be hearing voices and realized the radio was on. As I neared the surface, more signal was getting to it. At the ramp opening, Mick Jagger was suddenly wailing, "Ah... cain't GET no-o... satisFACshun..."
'What the hell,' I thought, 'He's right.' I left it on.
A few minutes later the "bat" suddenly descended to within a few feet from the front of my car and stayed there. I didn't stop or slow down.
I figured they could hear as well as see me, so I yelled, "Get that goddamned thing away from my car!"
They didn't, of course. It stayed about three feet from my bumper for a little while, then began closing in. They wanted me to stop. Fine.
When it was a foot away, I stopped, but I tried to make it appear that I was checking my left front tire. I reached down and thumped on the tire, then felt along the tread. The "bat" moved to keep me in sight.
I swore a little, kicked the tire, and generally made a minor tantrum of the event, yanking the hubcap off and dramatically tossing it back toward the base while swearing some more.
The "bat" remained only a few feet from me during the entire scene. I got my keys and went to the back of the car, then acted as if I had second thoughts and went to retrieve my hubcap.
The "bat" followed me. When I picked up the hubcap and turned back toward my car, I let the motion continue into a Frisbee toss that nailed the goddamned "bat" smack in its camera "eye".
The hubcap couldn't damage the "bat", but I hoped that whoever was linked into the "bat" back in the control room had wet himself. Or herself.
I leaped to get my arms around it. There were two small lenses covering access apertures on its topside. I drove my fingers into them and tore a chunk out of the side of the bat, then yanked a handful of wires out as well, not knowing what they were for.
The bat plummeted to the ground and lay still except for the nose camera eye. I kicked it once and walked back to my car with my dented hubcap, which I tossed on the passenger side floor.
At about forty, the road wasn't too rough. There was no point in hurrying. They could send another "bat" or worse if they intended to forcibly stop me. My old Chevy was no match for their toys.
As if out of nowhere Sara appeared alongside me, standing upright and flying sideways as she stared in at me. She swept her hair from her face and said nothing.
"Are you going to hover two feet from my bumper, too?" I asked her.
"That's their normal procedure to force a to vehicle slow and stop. My methods are a lot more direct. They aren't happy about the broken bat."
"We're close to Roswell. They can write it up as an encounter with a flying saucer."
"Why are you running, Ed?"
"Running? I'm only doing forty. You were about to lock me in down there, Sara."
"What makes you think that? Why would I do that?"
"I know what I picked up as you left the room, Sara. There's no doubt in my mind that you definitely considered slamming the doors on me."
Sara drifted alongside in silence for a moment before answering.
"Yes, I did. I was angry, and I thought, 'I ought to lock his ass up 'till April can get here'. I wasn't serious, Ed."
"You felt serious enough to me."
"Obviously so. Has it occurred to you that you captured that thought from me without being in contact?"
"It happens now and then with some people. Sometimes with animals, too, but not as thoughts formed of words, of course. Wait, that isn't wholly true. Sandy's cat knows some words and mixes them into her envisionments as sounds. That's how animals think, Sara. In flashes of envisionments. If a dish is empty, they envision it being filled and make noise about it until we grasp the concept and fulfill their envisionment. It's all cause and effect to them. Heh. They must think we're rather stupid."
Sara stared at me for another moment before speaking again.
"We need to talk, Ed. Will you stop for me?"
"Nope. I may not know where I'm going, but I'm not stopping till I get there."
Sara pointed into the car. "Do you mind if I ride along for a while, then? It's dusty out here."
I waved at the passenger seat. "It's dusty in here, too, but suit yourself."
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