Alien Tongues Page 10

  He smiled back. "You don't hear me complaining, do you?"

  Indeed, their comfort with sharing their private thoughts was a big part of his sustained morale. He wanted to learn the others' reactions to Chrissy's remark and also have her talk more about it, but had been worried about making things worse. As it turned out, each girl volunteered to share their thoughts.

  "You know, we talked about how they might dispose of us after this job," Jenny said suddenly as the two of them walked down to a local stream. "Chrissy raised the topic and it seemed to worry Tina a lot. But it would look awfully suspicious, wouldn't it? I mean, all four of us disappearing."

  Not if they manage to keep your presence here a secret, he thought, but replied that her point was a strong one. "And I hope you know that, if I get the slightest hint anything like that could happen, my first priority is you girls' safety. I mean that. Above any orders I might be given."

  Jenny put her arms round his waist and did a circular dance around him. "That's what I said to the others, and they all believe that too! It's funny, isn't it? I mean, we know you're dedicated to your job. But if it comes down to a choice between us and your boss, we believe you will side with us, even risk your own life for us. Are we being naive and stupid, do you think?"

  She laughed at her last words and sped up her circling until she became dizzy and just grabbed his waist as her legs gave way. Then she slid down his legs to the ground, laughing more. Séamus could not stop himself laughing at her behavior. "Yes," he said, "You girls are so naive and stupid, someone's got to pledge themselves to protect you." Jenny sat down where she landed and he decided to sit beside her. There was a very pretty view there of the stream below.

  "If and when it comes to that, I know that Phyllis will protect us, too," Jenny added, as if to herself.

  "I think Phyllis sees the whole of life as a battle."

  "I think to her, it has been. Séamus, I'm learning so much here. Even if something very bad happens, I can't regret coming. I had really no direction before. Seeing my parents' mistakes, I thought I would end up destroying my own life in the same way. Now everything has a meaning, finally." She took in a deep, noisy breath of the country air. "I told you we were like a family, and we are. But now we're also like some special military unit. I think I should start training in the gym, don't you?"

  As good as her word, Jenny then started working-out occasionally with him, though her athletic ability was far below that of Tina and Phyllis. Spending now so much more time in the gym himself, Séamus steadily increased his own fitness level. Maybe I am going to need it, he thought.

  Even Chrissy started light jogs with Séamus through the fields. Though she had never trained before, Séamus encouraged it, telling her she had a big advantage with her athletic build. Her improvement was rapid, but he noticed she sweated profusely, even when it was cold. Her pale face would turn pink, and she would peel off her sweatshirt to reveal a soaked tee-shirt. He pointed out the water vapor rising from her, and she laughed. "Like a racehorse? I've been watching them on TV. I love them, you know. They're kind of held captive, yet they show such an independent dignity. So I'm proud to be a racehorse!"

  After one such jog where she pushed herself further than before, Chrissy invited him back to her room, immediately pulled off the wet tee-shirt and lay on the bed. Her upper chest was pink like her face, and her bra was dark with sweat. Moisture ran down a flat, white stomach. As usual, he was ordered to sit next to her on the bed.

  "Are you secretly angry with me?" she asked.

  He looked down at her. "At this moment, how would that be possible?"

  Chrissy grinned. "Who knows? Maybe you're already getting bored with Asian ladies' bodies."

  "I had this topic with Tina earlier in the week. Life would be much less complicated if men did get bored that way. But the appetite is unfortunately similar to eating. One night you may imagine you can never face another bite ever again. The next day you're hungry – or perhaps just greedy."

  She dried her chest with a small towel. "I know I upset Tina with my talk about how expendable we are."

  "Well, it's not such an original thought as you might imagine." He walked to the kitchen to get glasses of water for them. "In some ways, it's an obvious observation. It's bound to disturb us at some point. But then we think it through. During most of our lives we are quite expendable anyway. And in this case, we're as likely to have some important future use which our governments want to keep us for."

  "You say 'we.' You think your danger is equal?"

  He drained his glass and went for more water. "I've told the others that I will make it equal. Anyone who wants to get to you will need to go through me."

  Chrissy sat up. "Want to hug a sweaty girl?"

  After a hug which left new sweat-patches on his tee-shirt, he said, "My only concern about you is that you're bearing up. I know you're not trying to sabotage anything. I will do my best to take care of the others' fears. But I want to make sure that you still have the will to get the job done."

  "Boss, you can be sure of that. Now I'll take a shower and let you worry about the others." With that, she walked towards the bathroom, unhooking her bra from the back. She slipped off the bra to reveal the same bare back he had seen the first day. She waved both hands as a gesture of farewell or perhaps liberation, then closed the bathroom door without turning round. Séamus saw himself out of her room. He wondered if she knew all along what the bathroom mirror would have been reflecting back at him.

  His teasing encounters with the girls always reminded him of the arrangement McMahon was making for him. After such a long time of inactivity with Sheryl, he had had some fears that he would be unable to perform in a moment of pressure. The very fear itself could lead inevitably to failure, like a fatal feed-back loop. But the girls, not to mention Alice on the prior Saturday, had started to reassure him about his physical response to stimulation. Maybe, to help ensure their own safety, all the girls subconsciously aided the flow of testosterone in his system. If so, well, good! He was certainly enjoying the sense of being male again. The longer he could postpone the actual need to perform, the better. McMahon texted him that everything was ready when he was ready. Séamus replied that he would save it for the following week, as he was not yet desperate and he was going to have to manage his budget. His boss would not be happy with a week's delay, but he could blame it on McMahon.

  Alice's updates on the progress in the lab were relatively brief all week. The girls were steadily adding to their sign vocabulary, but there were few indications of grammar formation.

  "There could be three reasons for that," Alice explained as the shared coffee in his room that Saturday afternoon. "One is that it simply needs more time. Creoles take many months if not years to develop from pidgins and, despite these girls' special abilities, we have no idea how much faster they could work. The second reason is that the girls could be unconsciously delaying grammar for fear that their means of communication will be cut off and replaced by numbers."

  "Jenny said as much to me last week," Séamus commented. "I guess it's difficult to know where to draw the line."

  "That's right," she responded. "On the one hand, their motivation is key, and what they learn from signing will help greatly when going over to numbers. On the other hand, we have to push them over to numbers for this experiment to work, and for certain they are not going to like it. Their nice flow of chat will dry up for what to them will feel like ages."

  "You mentioned a third reason," he said, refilling her cup.

  "Oh, yes. That this whole thing doesn't work in the first place. In that case, it means not only can't they work with the numbers, but that adults like them cannot even create their own sign-language creole. Or any creole. Remember, inventing creoles in the lab has never been tried before, and creoles have never been invented anywhere by adults. Only kids have that special genius. The fact that our girls retain their childhood language-learning ability doesn't mean they've retained t
heir creole-creating ability. It's just a hypothesis."

  "But no evidence of that third reason yet, right?"

  Alice nodded. "Put it this way – there's no evidence that any one of my reasons is more likely that the others – yet." She noticed him looking down and lowered her head to look up at his face. "I hope I didn't just depress you."

  "No, no." What if there was no progress over the next month, he thought? Could the girls maintain their motivation? With the best will in the world, would they still have what it took to make a breakthrough? "This was always an experiment, right? We have no idea. Now what's important to discuss at this moment is which pub are we going to disgrace ourselves in tonight?"

  Alice's face lit up with a radiant smile. He realized that she must have feared he would have forgotten, or was about to make an excuse. Clearly her night-out was very important to her. How sweet.

  "Sounds like we're thinking along the same lines, Mr FitzGerald. Two visits to the White Hart and two brushes with Dave Orwood – not a great record. I'd like to take you instead to the George in Pemstone. There's a new cook there, and this Saturday night we should remember to eat."

  Preparation followed the prior routine, with Séamus keeping her mother company while Alice changed. This time Mrs Turner asked a series of questions about his childhood, which he answered with varying degrees of truthfulness. The drive to the pub was almost twenty minutes. When they had gone most of the way, he suddenly asked Alice to pull over wherever she found a safe spot.

  "I'm sorry, Alice," he said, "Something's just happened back at the facility." He pulled from his pocket the device he had shown Tina and began tapping the screen. After about twenty seconds he added, "Some individuals have got through the security fence."

  "Call the guard?" Alice suggested.

  "Not yet. He'll just scare them off and we'll be none the wiser. We'll need to go back. When you get to the last hill before overlooking the facility, pull into the drive on the right and turn off your headlights. For the last two hundred yards, go slow and try to use only your side-lights."

  After they parked, he led Alice on foot through part of a field until the facility came into view below, visible from the security lights which ran throughout the buildings, together with brighter lights in a few areas such as the girls' rooms. Apart from the entrance-gate guard's booth, nothing else was illuminated. He took a monocular from his pocket and looked around. In one corner of a building, the security lighting was noticeably absent, presumably shut down deliberately. He could just about make out a human figure, in the thin light cast by the rest of the facility, next to what looked like a window or doorway.

  "Unfortunately this was not a false alarm," he said quietly. "We're getting broken into. Time to give our visitor a bit of a scare."

  He tapped again on his device. What sounded like a gunshot came from out in the fields on the western side of the buildings. The figure he had been watching started to run. He tapped again and a flash of light appeared at the corner of the building the person was running towards. "Got him!" he added with satisfaction.

  "Got him how?" Alice asked.

  "Got a good picture of him, I mean," Séamus explained. "OK, let's drive down to the guard's booth and tell him what happened. I don't want him leaving his post on a fruitless exercise."

  After visiting the guard, they decided it was no longer worth driving to the George which was a good half-hour from there, and instead went to the local Plough, ate a quick meal and returned to the facility. Séamus admitted that it was somewhat irrational to feel the need to get back to the facility soon, because that particular night was the least likely time someone would try another break-in. Yet both he and Alice simply felt uncomfortable now spending their night in a pub when the girls had been so close to danger.

  Alice also readily accepted the alternative of a drink in his room. It seemed what mattered to her was for them to get some social time together. It was certainly not unpleasant for him, also. Instead of the lab-coat, she was dressed and made-up to kill. By adjusting the lighting in his room and putting on some music, they could have been sitting in some private club room.

  A glass of wine in hand, she said, "The first thing you need to explain is what you did back there. I never knew we had such a fancy defense system."

  "You didn't until I got here. The gunshot noise and the special lighting with high-speed cameras are my handiwork. I wouldn't be here unless some kind of trouble was anticipated, so I needed to be ready for it."

  "Do you think it's the people Dave warned us about?"

  "Maybe. The picture I took of the guy fleeing is already being analyzed and we should know who it is tomorrow. Then I've got something to talk to the local police about. Just to add some pressure so they share with me what's going on around here. Somehow we need to convince the local community that there's nothing here that's a threat to any of them, without giving out enough information that the real story doesn't get blown."

  "After tonight, do you think they'll try again?"

  "Not for a while, now they know we're not a push-over. But next time it will be much more sophisticated."

  "Hmmm, just like my James Bond." Alice walked over to the music player and selected a catchier number. "This dance, Mr Bond?"

  They danced together in the kitchen. It felt like fun and they continued for song after song. Alice began challenging Séamus to shots. Her dancing became more fluid and exotic. He enjoyed watching her move, and her rhythm was infectious. Finally the music got slower, and they held each other as they shuffled around the room. Finally tired, Alice dropped onto the bed. He joined her, and she pulled his arm round her like before. She seemed to fall asleep for a while. Then she said quietly, "Do you mind if we do a repeat of last week?"

  Séamus said he could not think of a reason to mind.

  "Good. But this time do you have a pair of pajamas I can borrow? I'm sweaty and I want to take a shower, then get comfortable. I hate to wake up in my clothes."

  Nothing could seem more reasonable. He went to a closet a found the one set of pajamas he had been given for Christmas years ago and never wore, but had seemed useful to bring on this mission. Alice spent a long time in the bathroom during which he drank steadily. She emerged in the pajamas and got into bed. After washing in the bathroom himself, he turned off the light and got into bed beside her. She turned to hug him, but not kiss. It was clear she was wearing nothing except the pajamas. He was wearing tight jockeys as well as boxers to prevent "fall out," and was now certain he had no performance problem.

  "Hug my back again?" she asked, then turned around. There was no point in disguising what was now as obvious as a brick house. It would be so easy to make a move now. Slipping his hand inside her pajama jacket, or gently pulling the chord on the pants. He was certain she was not such a tease as to then refuse him. Yet once he stepped over that line, so much would follow from it. He could later try to pretend that it didn't matter and that nothing had changed, but he knew he was a bad actor. Alice was too decent a person to accuse him of using her, but he was likely to find himself reading it into every facial expression. Wonderful that the idea of easing down those pajama bottoms was just then, exposing what he knew to be silky-smooth skin, the price to be paid was simply too much. If he was going to damage this mission for the sake of lust, there were four other girls who were much higher on his fantasy list.

  He thought about each of the girls. Right now, the list was topped by Tina. If he was going to lose control, better it be the most amazing experience he could have. It was not just that incredible body and those wild eyes. Tina's big-cat hunger for love would overpower him and suck everything out of him. In an odd twist of her cry, he didn't want to die before he experienced such a feeling.

  Now that he knew he was going to resist the temptation in front of him, his arousal declined. Alice felt warm and cuddly and reminded him of so many nights with Sheryl. He fell asleep.

  He woke to find Alice kissing him on the cheek, fully dr
essed. "Dear, thanks for the use of your bed and your big arms. 11 am start again, OK?"

  She left. He lay a while longer, enjoying her scent on the pillow, thinking about his strange new life. Then he showered, dressed, ate breakfast, and decided to visit the girls. None of them mentioned anything unusual about the previous night. If any of them had been awake at the time of the gunshot sound, it must have sounded unremarkable. That was reassuring, given the recent discussions about their safety. After they went to the lab, he received news about the intruder's identification. He made an appointment to see a police detective in the town which had jurisdiction over the area. He drove off for the appointment as soon as he had taken the girls back to their rooms that afternoon, promising them more time that evening.

  At the start of their meeting, the detective asked why a government auditor up from London would be also handling the building security.

  "Audit is a broad concept for us," Séamus explained. "It includes fraud and theft, and some of us specialize in security. You can take it that this is my responsibility. If you'd like to verify that, I can give you the number for the head of the facility and you can verify that person online."

  "Not necessary – just curious," the detective said. "So you have a picture of Edward Allsop running past a camera outside your building. And you say he was trying to break in?"

  "Yes he was," Séamus answered, "But I'm not looking for you to charge him. Our work there is highly confidential and at this point it is not worth risking the publicity. I just need to know what information you may have on this man, which may help us understand why he would want to break in."

  The detective hesitated, then said, "I shouldn't really tell you anything. But I will do so because you may well find out something of value to us, and we sorely need evidence against the likes of Allsop for bigger stuff. Have you heard of Kevin Grant?" Séamus shook his head. "Well, we have reasons to suspect he's involved in an international call-girl business, but we've never had enough evidence to prosecute him. Ed Allsop is one of his men."