Gargantua
Page 20
“Wait one fucking minute. You’re telling me that you were whipped by the guy who runs the fucking restaurant?”
Wayne glared directly into the general’s eyes—or, at least, where he imagined the general’s eyes to be behind the mirrorshades. “No sir, I’m telling you that I decided to go with the plan sanctioned by the duly elected leader of this sovereign nation.”
Cox took a long drag on the cigar, then blew out a chimney’s worth of smoke. Wayne hated cigars even more than he hated the tropics, but this was his commanding officer . . .
“It’s a good thing for you this worked, Chris.”
“A good thing for all of us, sir. A frontal assault would’ve resulted in a lot of dead Marines, and might not have worked.”
Cox shook his head. “Fine, whatever. I’ll call off my guys.” He took another drag on the cigar. “Jesus fucking Christ, it’s hot. Where does a guy go to get a drink in this hellhole?”
Wayne smiled. “Follow me, sir,” he said as he led the general toward Manny’s.
Jack Ellway stared at the screen of Mulder, his laptop computer, presently serving its intended function by sitting in his lap. He had been in the Malau Clinic since his return, having had Brandon and Paul bandage him up. When Alyson returned from Kalor, she fretted over her lone patient—the rest had remained in Kalor’s superior facilities—redoing the bandages “so you don’t look like the Mummy’s love slave,” and ordered him to rest in bed for at least a day.
Brandon had fetched his laptop so he wouldn’t go crazy.
“What the hell’re you doing?” came the voice of Alyson Hart.
Jack turned and looked sheepishly at her. “Uh, playing Minesweeper?” he ventured lamely.
“Right. News flash, Jack,” Alyson said with that amazing smile of hers, “when your doctor says, ‘You need rest,’ that doesn’t mean, ‘You should chart fish migration patterns,’ or whatever it is you do on that silly machine.”
“You should listen to her, Jack.”
Jack peered past Alyson to see that Doctor Hale, Paul, and Brandon had come into the room behind her.
It was Hale who had spoken. “This sheila knows her business,” he added.
“Sexist terms notwithstanding,” Alyson said, folding over the monitor on the laptop, “you should be relaxing. That’s why I’ve kept those press vultures out of here.”
Looking at Paul, Jack said, “So why’d you let him in?”
Putting his hand to his chest in mock outrage, Paul said, “You wound me, sir. Besides, I invoked local privilege. But I had to promise all nine hundred reporters out there some kind of statement on how you’re doing.”
Shaking his head in amazement at his new celebrity status, Jack said, “Tell them I’m fine.” Jack had given a statement to the press earlier, after which Alyson had forbidden any press to set foot across the clinic’s verandah without a verifiable injury. When Jack had pointed out that some of them might injure themselves in order to get an interview with Jack, Alyson promised to make sure that whatever the injury was, it would get infected.
“Uh, Dad?” Brandon said. “Doctor Epstein called. She wants to know where your first report is. We, uh—we’ve been here a week, y’know.”
Jack chuckled. In all the excitement, he had forgotten about the reason he came to Malau in the first place: to chart the effects of the seismic activity on the local marine life. He was to spend six weeks here, e-mailing a report to his supervisor, Doctor Emily Epstein of UCSD’s Biology Department, every week.
“Geez,” Paul said, “doesn’t she watch the news?”
“Actually, she doesn’t,” Jack said. “When someone asked her what she thought about the O.J. verdict, she thought they were talking about orange juice.”
Brandon asked, “So, uh, what do I tell her?”
“Tell her to put Fox News on.” He laughed. “Then tell her I’ll call her tomorrow.”
Brandon smiled. “ ’Kay.”
“So, uh,” Paul started, “can you give me a little more? If I go back out there with just, ‘He’s fine,’ I’ll get lynched.”
“Oh come on, Paul,” Jack said with a grin, “you’re a big-time reporter now. Embellish.”
Paul rolled his eyes. “Please. After running the one-man weekly for all these years, I’m just not cut out for this big-time crap. I’m waiting for this fifteen minutes to be over, so I can have my life back.”
“I would’ve thought this would be your life, Paul,” Alyson said with, Jack noticed, not a little snideness.
Paul shrugged. “After I graduated Berkeley, that would’ve been true. Hell, I’ve already got six job offers that I would’ve gladly killed for five years ago—but they’re all off Malau. And, to be honest, I love it here.”
Alyson blinked. “You never struck me as the sentimental type, Paul.”
“I have depths you never bothered to plumb, Doctor,” Paul said archly. “Besides, it’s not all sentiment. For one thing, tourism’ll probably shoot through the roof ’round here, which means I can raise my ad rates with a clear conscience and make a killing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go embellish.”
With that, Paul left. Hale, on then other hand, moved closer to Jack’s bed. “I’m afraid I’ve gotta get a move on as well, Jack. Need t’get back to the Institute—Board of Directors got all browned off ’cause I was takin’ ‘unnecessary risks,’ and a load of other crap, so I gotta go an’ soothe ’em.”
“Will you be coming back?” Jack asked.
“That’s the plan. Still gotta put those seismographs through their paces. ’Sides, this is still the best place for a good nap,” he finished with a grin. Offering Jack his hand, he said, “Listen, Jack, when your six weeks’re up, give me a ring. We can always use a good marine biologist.”
Jack accepted the handshake. “I may just do that,” he said, though he looked at Alyson as he said it.
With that, Hale left.
Alyson smiled. “Six weeks, huh?”
“Well, five now, unless I can convince Emily to let me make up the time I lost chasing giant reptiles.”
Checking over Jack’s dressing, Alyson said, “Well, good. That gives me at least five weeks to convince you to accept Hale’s offer.” Flashing Jack another one of her amazing smiles, she turned and left the room.
Well, that’s certainly an incentive to stick around, he thought.
“Dad?” Brandon said hesitantly.
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to stay here?”
Jack frowned. “Well, if we did—would you mind?”
Quickly, Brandon shook his head. “No way. This place is great! I was worried you wouldn’t wanna stay.”
Smiling, Jack reached out to his son and pulled him into a gentle hug. “Yeah, well, maybe it’s time we stopped living like gypsies and settled down again.”
“Sounds good to me,” Brandon said.
What a week, Jack thought. First I find a new genus of reptile, then I bring the remnants of one family together, then I settle the remnants of my own.
He thought about the creatures they had discovered, a new species created by humanity’s folly. I wonder if there are any more of them. If not, they’re destined to die out—there are just three males left. That’s a damned shame.
Thinking about Alyson, he thought, But then, I found someone else. Maybe the giant creature will, too. I think after all this, we all, human and reptile, deserve some happy endings.