Amanda's eyes were riveted to the chauffeur and when she saw he didn't seem the least bit interested in them, she took a half a step forward and spoke. "Your sign. It says Grayson--Yates. That's our names. Are you looking for us?"
The chauffeur raised his bushy black eyebrows and got a huge smile on his face, a smile that literally seemed to go from earlobe to earlobe revealing two rows of pearly whites contrasted against his chocolate skin. The smile diminished his threatening appearance and unconsciously, Amanda returned the gesture.
The chauffeur then spoke. "Why if yo' names is Ms. Amanda Yates and Mr. Burt Grayson, I certinly is here fo you two."
Burt and Amanda responded by nodding their heads up and down in unison and, as soon as they did, the chauffeur extended his huge hand toward Amanda and nearly swallowed Amanda's hand as he grabbed it from her side.
"I'm Jeremiah Washington," he said as he pumped her arm up and down. "And I'm yo driver." His accent was thickly southern, rich, deep and friendly.
Amanda took back her hand and then asked. "Who sent you?"
Jeremiah stepped forward and grabbed the luggage from Burt's hands and answered. "Mr. Patrick Huxley. He sent me. I'm to drive you right to the office," he replied and then lithely turned and started to walk left toward the baggage claim area. "Now hurry up and we can be off," he added as he lumbered forward.
Amanda beamed at Pat's thoughtfulness and started following Mr. Washington. Burt fell into stride behind her, but then caught up and took her hand as they walked. He was very impressed with the whole affair. First class tickets. A first class lady. First class chauffeur. He was going to like Mr. Huxley. He just knew it.
Amanda felt Burt grab her hand but didn't pull away as she wanted to. In spite of her previous civility toward her traveling companion, she was still royally pissed at him for leaving her high and dry at her motel, so instead of returning the friendly squeeze Burt was giving her hand, she merely let her arm go limp and lifeless--not so limp that Burt would be able to tell she would rather be sticking her hand in a garbage disposal than holding his, just limp enough so she could pretend it wasn't really her hand being held, that it was somehow disassociated from her body.
They arrived at the baggage claim a few minutes later and after they told him which bags were theirs, Jeremiah gathered them up and carried them out to the car. They followed him and quickly jumped into the back seat of the stretch limo to avoid the chilly night air. In a brief forty minutes, Jeremiah pulled the ear up in front of the NSF Building and stopped.
Before getting out, Burt bent down in the seat and then stared up at the non-descript logo which hung centered over the two thick glass entry doors. After all, he was going to be using this facility if he were lucky enough to get the post Amanda offered him and he wanted to remember this moment. The first thought that struck him when he stared upward at the logo was curiosity at just what the NSF did besides showing an interest in thought programming. He had wondered this from the start, but Amanda had purposefully been evasive earlier when he had tried probing her about this, and now, seeing the impressive stone building, his curiosity was piqued even more.
Amanda paid little attention to him as he sat there staring up and she got out and joined Jeremiah at the back of the car where he was finishing unloading the bags. There she watched the chauffeur as he brought her luggage up to the front of the building and marveled at how easily he lifted the suitcase she had had to struggle with on her trip out when she was alone. When he was finished, he tipped his hat and started to get back into the ear. Burt was still seated in the back.
"Come on, Burt. This is it. Let's go! It's getting cold out here!" Amanda said. Some of the earlier edge had returned to her voice as she reminded him she had been out in the cold longer than she liked.
Burt quickly complied and stepped out on the curb and the instant his foot hit the concrete, a cold blast of winter air hit him . A freak snow storm had blown in the previous day, and although most of the snow had melted as soon as it hit, the North wind was still howling and it cut right through Burt's pullover sweater making him realize that he was a true Californian and unused to the Eastern seaboard's colder winter clime.
Burt unfolded his arms and quickly put his hands up to his mouth and blew warm air into them as the wind found an opening in the neck of his sweater and plunged its icy finger down the front of his chest. He then looked up at Amanda who was smiling at his antics.
"You're absolutely right, Amanda," Burt said, reading her face as she stood there laughing at him, "first thing tomorrow, I'm going to have to get a heavier coat. Sorry I kept you waiting, really!"
“Okay. Let's just go inside where it's warm, but give Jeremiah a tip before we do."
Burt reached into his pocket and produced a five dollar bill which he held up to the window for the chauffeur to see. That same smile that Jeremiah had when they first met him at the airport enveloped his face again as he rolled the window down and accepted the money. Burt returned his smile and then stepped away from the curb as Jeremiah drove off. Then he climbed the stairs and joined Amanda, now already inside.
As soon as the glass door closed after Burt, the guard on duty looked up from the paperback and greeted them both.
"Hello, Ms. Yates." Mr. Simmons said. "Long time no see. Where have you been this past week? We missed you around here."
"California," Amanda replied as she took off her coat. ""That's where Mr. Grayson here is from."
Simmons nodded a greeting to Burt who, in turn, nodded back.
Mr. Simmons was an elderly, seventyish, security guard and had been with the NSF since its founding some ten years earlier. At that time, he had had to come out of retirement to help pay his wife's medical bills, but after her death some three years later, he stayed on out of habit more than anything else. His insurance had been kind and with social security, he really didn't need the money, but he did need the company even though now he only worked graveyards and weekends, the shifts none of the other younger guards wanted. But that was okay by him. It gave him plenty of time to read. Likewise, the NSF employees were his only family now and he especially liked the younger girls who worked there. The feeling amongst most of them , too, was mutual. To them, Mr. Simmons was their adopted grandfather, and like grandfathers all over the world, Simmons kept tabs on his favorites, of which Amanda was on the top of that list.
Simmons scratched his bald head which shone like a cue-ball under the fluorescent lights of the lobby and put his new Stephen King novel, The Dark Half, down. He then stood up and stretched.
"California? Why you travelin' all the way out there?" he asked while he moved forward to look at Amanda's ID which she had pulled from her purse and laid on the counter for him to see. Simmons took one look at it, and then looked up to her face, smiled at her and then scowled into the video camera which was over his right shoulder making sure he did his job right by checking everyone's badge even though he knew them by sight.
Amanda watched him and then laughed. "Mr. Simmons, you know I can't tell you that." She then pointed up to the video camera and whispered, "Big Brother wouldn't like it."
Simmons immediately raised an eyebrow and then responded, "I know what you mean!"
"Well you can tell me who your friend is, can't you?" he added as they both stood there 1Paring into the camera.
Amanda nodded and then introduced Burt to Simmons. Both men were smiling broadly; Simmons, because he suspected Burt might be a new-found boyfriend who had come out to spend the holidays; Grayson, because he could see by the way the old codger was sizing him up and down that Simmons was treating Amanda like a granddaughter. This latter thought made him feel more comfortable than he had felt all day and caused him to lose any feelings of trepidation he had been carrying with him on the ride out from Dulles.
During that time in the car as he had watched the dreary landscape whizz by, he had let his mind wander and in that wandering, he began to doubt whether or not he would be accepted by the NSF, and e
ven if he was, how long it would be until he saw Debbie again. Seeing Mr. Simmon's warm smile changed all that, and his fears left as quickly as his previous schizophrenic spells had arrived.
"You can sign in here, Mr. Grayson," Simmons said pointing to the visitor's logbook which he pushed forward on the counter.
Burt stared at the open page and read. "Last name, first name, middle initial." No problem here, he thought as he signed.
The logbook, which was about a half an inch thick and bound in black simulated leather, looked very official. The next line asked for "Person/point of Contact." and on reaching this, he looked up to Amanda for help. She glanced at the blank and then back at him and quickly spelled Mr. Patrick Huxley, aloud for him to enter.Burt then came to the line labeled "Classified, Unclassified," and again looked up to her, unsure of what to put. Although he had grown up in California and had visited the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena on a school trip before and had signed a similar log then, he thought it strange an organization like the NSF, which he thought did only medical research, or so Amanda had alluded when he asked her what the NSF did, would have any classified programs. He was under the impression that a question such as the one on the page was reserved only for military research labs.
Amanda saw his hesitation and lifted the pen from his hand and quickly, lest she raise any further questions, scrawled a "U" in the appropriate space and then closed the book and slid it toward Simmons.
Simmons then gave him his white laminated, magnetically encoded visitor's badge and punched the buzzer to unlock the entryway vault door. As soon as he did, the thick steel door unlatched with a dull, metallic clunk, a sound which icily pierced Burt's nerves and sent a shiver down his back--one that was even more pronounced than the one the wind produced when it knifed through his sweater earlier.
Amanda stepped forward through the door and summoned Burt to follow, which, after a brief hesitation, he did. Once inside, she punched the button on the wall and the door clanked shut. The sound made Burt feel like he was entering a bank vault and wonder what was so important at the NSF that it had to be guarded by such extreme measures. He turned to ask Amanda, but she had already started walking down the long vacant corridor. On both sides, Burt saw similar vault doors which seemed to go on forever. He got the feeling he was in a bad dream running down a hallway and with each step he took, the hallway stretched further out. The friendly atmosphere and good feelings he had recently experienced in the lobby seemed miles away and with each step forward and each dull, lonely echo of his and her footfalls, he began to feel increasingly lonely and strange inside again. When they were halfway down the hall, large beads of sweat started to form on his brow and to trickle down into his eyes. The salt stung and he quickly and self-consciously wiped his face with the back of his hand as he followed her.
He prayed he wasn't going to have another attack and ruin his chances for the research position and tried to concentrate and slow his breathing as they continued down the hall. While he was doing this, he tried to keep his eyes focused on the back of Amanda's head rather than look at the cold, steel doors which they passed and which hid god knows what abominations behind them and were the cause for his sudden anxiety attack. He was using the same deep breathing technique that is taught in La Mas classes to help women during early stages of labor--a sort of self-hypnosis which he unconsciously picked up from his mother who used to drag him to the classes during her pregnancy with his brother, Daniel.
The closer they got to the end of the corridor and the slower he breathed, the more he found his anxiety level diminish. By the time they reached Pat's office which stood at the end of the hallway and Amanda finished punching in the cypher code, Burt felt thankfully normal again. Breathing a sigh of relief, he stepped inside.
Pat was deep in concentration when they stepped into his office. Be had been reading the latest medical report Dr. Jerome had finally produced for him after innumerable proddings by him. He found the report fascinating and worth the wait, and hardly wanted to put it down. But put it down he did, quickly closing the cover lest Mr. Grayson be able to inadvertently read it as it lay upside down on his desk. As he did, he looked up guiltily from the report and his eyes met Burt who was staring directly at him. As Burt neared the desk, in one quick, smooth furtive gesture, that all but said "you don't really want to see this Mr. Grayson," Pat slid the report into the center drawer of the desk and then locked it. As the latch clicked into place, he let out an audible sigh of relief and then, and only then, did he get up to meet his guests. The entire episode took perhaps three seconds.
Pat came around to the front where Amanda and Burt were standing. He was all smiles, fakes smiles, like the kind the dentist gets on his face right before he slips you a needle so long he could go through both cheeks and gums from one side, have it come out the other and still have plenty of needle left. "You must be the amazing Mr. Grayson Amanda's told me so much about," Pat syruply said to Burt as he gestured for him to take one of the two chairs which stood in front of the desk.
"Do sit down, you must be exhausted from your trip," he continued smiling at Burt, but completely ignoring Amanda and speaking very rapidly as do most people when caught in the act; in this case, caught reading a report describing seemingly positive evidence of the medical risks associated with the level of deep concentration required for "linking," a report he could ill-afford to show the young man to whom he was now speaking, lest he frighten SIGMA ONE's only chance for survival away.
Pat continued, but slowed his speech slightly having realized he really was acting as if he were trying to cover something up. "How was your flight?" he asked as he reached for his pipe and tamped it full of tobacco as a diversion.
"Okay," Burt replied, his eyes locked in place staring at the middle of the desk where the report had been. It was obvious Amanda's boss was trying to keep him from seeing whatever he had put in the drawer and to Burt, things were getting "curioser and curioser."
First there was the security guard at the front desk. Second, there was the question on the form regarding whether or not his visit was classified. Third, there were the numerous vault doors they passed on the way to Mr. Huxley's office. Certainly these weren't needed for medical research. He could tell they weren't hermetically sealed, and everyone knows when you're working on things like germ warfare, which is one thought that crossed Burt's mind as to the nature of the business going on at the NSF, you need hermetically sealed doors to keep things like the Andromeda Strain from getting out and melting people's faces. And finally, there was Mr. Huxley trying to hide some sort of document from him. Too many coincidences had occurred in too short a span of time. That's what it was, just too many unexplained things for his liking.
Burt started looking critically around the room for some sort of clue which might answer some of the questions he had regarding the nature of the work which was being carried on at the NSF, but as he looked at the office walls, he found them clinically blank save for two items: a photograph of a much younger Pat Huxley standing at the steps of the same building they were now in, obviously cutting the ribbon for the site dedication, and his diploma from the U.S Naval Academy; neither of which offered any new evidence whatsoever. The pictures did prove two things, though. From the fading on the picture of the building dedication, Burt surmised that Mr. Huxley was the founder of the NSF; from the diploma, that he was once in the Navy like his father had been which was something he could relate to. But aside from these two things, he knew nothing else.
Burt got up from his chair and moved toward the diploma to see just when Huxley graduated and from that to make a guess as to how old he was. He did this thinking that if he knew how old he was, perhaps he could establish some common ground with his soon-to-be employer, or so he hoped. Burt figured if Huxley was near his dad's age, that perhaps the two might have run across each other, the Navy being the small community that it is.
The year was written in script, but easily determinable at being 1969, in the y
ear of our Lord anno domino etcetera, etcetera. "That would make him say forty-three, give or take a year or two and assuming he graduated when he was twenty-three," Burt thought to himself. That would, indeed make him a contemporary of Dad."
He had to ask. He had to find some way of establishing some commonality so he could get some answers. He turned away from the wall and spoke, "Academy grad, huh, Mr. Huxley?"
"Uh, huh," Pat replied curtly not knowing what to make from his interest in his former military career, but deciding to play it out.
"My dad was in the Navy. Ship fitter first class, on the Texas. Ever run into him?"
"Sorry, Mr. Grayson. I was an aviator, and besides that was a long time ago."
Burt knew it was too much of a long shot to hope for and on hearing the negative reply, moved back to take his chair. As he sat down, he felt slightly flushed, but the feeling subsided as quickly as it came on.
Pat, unable to hold back his curiosity any longer began his questioning, but only after giving Amanda, whom up to this time he had completely ignored, a baleful, gratuitous thank-you look to which she responded with a "screw you very much, I'm hurt, you son of a bitch" look in return. He knew she was probably upset at the greeting he had given her. He couldn't help that. Under the circumstances he had done the best he could do. He did, after all have his priorities, and at that particular moment, his priority definitely was not giving one tinker's damn whether or not Amanda liked the greeting or not. His priority was finding out everything about the young man she had brought to him, and, confidentially Scarlet to borrow a phrase he didn't give a damn' what she
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