Alien Tongues Read online

  Chrissy looked at him, pained. It was the most beautiful look he had seen from her. "No, you're right. I should apologize to her, and also Tina. But I think the point is, I'm the one who finds the greatest difficulty seeing us as a team here. I mean, we're all individuals with entirely different cultures, just come together to suit our own ends. When this is over we'll all go our own way, and probably never think about each other again. I guess when Jenny keeps mentioning being sisters I want to tell her, don't be so stupid!"

  Séamus did not have a good response to Chrissy's last point. After talking with each girl, he took them back to the lab to restart their session. There was no more fighting. But the experience left a bad taste for him. He worried that he had been sustained by his own image of a team in search of their shared goal. Now, as the goal moved further beyond their reach, it was the stuff that they hadn't, couldn't, didn't want to share which came to the fore.

  It was a few days after this incident that he received an unusual text from Sheryl. She asked him when he was able to put aside an hour for a video call. He felt the muscles in his stomach tighten painfully. He could imagine only one reason for such a request. They scheduled the call for that evening, which was Sheryl's first availability. He tried to prepare for the call, but finally knew he could not. He had no sense of how far her thinking had gone without him.

  He thought she looked exceptionally pretty when he saw her on the screen, but told himself this was an inevitable emotional response to the fear of losing her. Her blonde hair had been cut since his departure and had a younger, slightly wilder look to it. A good or a bad sign? An intelligence agent, he felt he had no clue about such subtle things.

  "Séamus, I have to tell you that I've been dating since you left," she began after very brief pleasantries. "Just dating, you understand. Dinners and drinks, walks, nothing else. I hope you can trust me about that."

  And if I can't, he thought, what can I say? I've had Alice sleeping in my bed many nights and I've had a series of erotic fantasies with four Asian women. "I trust you always to do whatever's fair," he replied.

  She continued, "Recently I've spent a lot of time with a man you don't know. He was introduced to me by one of Daddy's friends, as he's in investment banking. He's very suitable for me, Séamus, and he really wants to marry me. He's happy to buy a house close to M&D and even help me finance my own practice there. M&D love him. He wants kids whenever I do. All my friends say he's gorgeous and I would be a total fool to let him go."

  But you don't love him, Séamus realized. He asked, "Do you love him?"

  Her face turned angry. "Don't play that game with me. If I am thinking of marrying him, of course I love him. I said we are very suitable. He's very good-looking. He's very interested in my practice. He's so sweet to all my friends. I know we can be very happy together."

  "So are you calling me to tell me to move my stuff out of our apartment?"

  "Séamus, don't be a child! God! Why are you always like this? I talk about marrying another man and your response is, 'Oh, OK, when should I move my stuff out?' Are you a man or some drugged-up teenager?"

  "Sorry," he replied. "I'm not good at these situations. I know in so many ways he's a better man for you. But I hope you know I still love you. If I gave up this stupid job here in Yorkshire and quit the government, maybe tried some private security firm as a consultant, would you consider giving me a second chance?"

  Sheryl said nothing for what seemed to him about ten seconds. He felt his face being scanned for any further meaning it could add. He had the impression she had not anticipated his question, so was trying to weigh up her feelings as well as articulate a practical response. And how to weigh her investment in him versus the eager offer of a man with a perfect marital resume?

  "Séamus, I hope that is not your typical Irish blather. I simply cannot live on empty promises."

  He was being given a second chance. It was curious that he did not feel the same elation as when his boss had handed him the minding assignment. But this was, he concluded, a somewhat more mature issue to which he was responding appropriately.

  "I hope you mean blarney, rather than blather, but you can be sure it's not either. I've never even mentioned giving up government service before, despite the fact I know how you feel about it. So if I volunteer it now, you can be sure I'm going to do it."

  The aggression seemed to fizzle out in Sheryl, as if it was just too hard to maintain in the face of a combatant who was getting on his knees. "Séimi," she said, her voice having risen several pitches. "You really want to give it all up so we can have a life together? You won't hate me for making you do that?"

  "I'll sign a piece of paper now saying you never made me do it. What you said in the past had little effect upon me. The job itself has told me I've been a bit of a fool. Now that you're planning to leave me, seems I actually need to get my finger out and shift my testicles one side of the fence or the other."

  She hesitated. "And there's been no one there in Yorkshire? Nothing that's going to embarrass me?"

  He shook his head, hoping she would not ask more and force an explicit lie.

  Now there was resolve in her face. "OK, Séamus FitzGerald. If you want my parents to stomach a silly rhyming name like Sheryl FitzGerald which sounds like it comes out of some Irish drinking song, you'd better start improving your image with them. No more fighting with Daddy, please!"

  There had been in truth only one "fight." One night, after several double Scotches (despite the unopened Irish whiskey bottle Séamus had brought) Sheryl's father had launched into an invective against the Irish Republican Army, during which the name of Michael FitzGerald was mentioned. Séamus had walked out of the house without a word and sat in his car for an hour. When Sheryl finally came out to find him, they agreed it was best that he return alone to the apartment.

  "Do you think I could get people to start calling me Sherry? Sherry FitzGerald sounds good, doesn't it?"

  "Sherry and Séamus," he mused. "We sound like a cocktail."

  "Silly." But now there was a warmth in her tone he hadn't heard for a long time. She now had a perfect vision in her mind of how her future could be, with a Séamus who was reformed in just the right way. It clearly trumped the off-the-peg investment banker, for reasons of the heart that were beyond her conscious control. Maybe there hadn't been such a threat after all. Maybe he had used his one bazooka rocket on a stray dog. But maybe it was all for the better.

  When the call ended, he felt strangely light-headed. When had he made this decision he announced to Sheryl? Had he instantly decided that he could not lose this beauty? All his friends – correction, his few good friends whose opinion he could trust – thought they were right together, and that he was a lucky S.O.B. to win her. Maybe he had just faced the truth about his life. You needed the right partner to get through it, and the dreamer needed the practical realist to save himself from wasting his life. The difference between a Sheryl and an Alice was that his new fiancée would push him when he needed a push.

  And, of course, she was gorgeous, socially adept, knew lots of useful people, and would somehow maintain a beautiful home while building a profitable doctor's practice. He had it made. No doubt he had just come to his senses. He believed he could make a very decent security consultant. He knew a mountain of material, he'd paid his dues, and he was a patient explainer. And consultants didn't have to make life-and-death calls in a split second.

  Now he was faced with the minor terror of calling his boss and handing in his resignation. Yet rationally, why should he be so worried about it? There were plenty of male agents who could replace him at the facility. It would even give the girls someone different to get to know. Maybe he was the reason why things had got so stale. He would certainly give his boss a couple of weeks to find someone. And exactly how high on her agenda was this project now? He didn't get to hear much from her. The Agency had moved on, as it so often did, and left him behind in the wilds of Yorkshire.

  Before
that, it was probably wise to do a dress rehearsal with Alice. After all, they had promised each other they would share information first with each other. If there was something he was missing from this sensible picture of escape to his new future, she was likely to find it.

  It was a night when Alice had decided to stay over. When she came to his room later after working alone in the lab, he poured them drinks and told her he had made an important decision.

  "Alice, I suspect this is going to come as a shock to you. I've decided to quit my job."

  Alice's face didn't register much, but her head seemed to jerk back slightly, as if something had physically hit her. "I see." She paused to drink. "When will you leave?"

  "No idea. I haven't told my boss yet. Just my fiancée."

  "Fiancée," Alice repeated. Séamus realized that was a new word for him. "And you're sure about this? When did you decide?"

  "I decided tonight. But yes, I'm sure. I will lose the woman in my life if I don't give up this career. It's a terrible choice to be faced with, but one way or another some choice gets made. I have to admit that the almost-certain failure of this project completes a 100% record at the Agency, so I'm sure that soon enough my job is going to quit me, anyway."

  "But what about the girls?"

  "Alice, you said yourself that their families have been paid enough already and they can make good money by themselves. You told me they are only doing this to please me. If that's true then, if I quit, they'll happily quit and keep themselves safe from the danger of knowing too much. If it's not true, then I'm not so important and another agent can maybe do better. Either way, it doesn't make sense for me to gamble my life on this hundred-to-one outsider."

  Alice kept nodding as he spoke. Then she silently held out her glass for a refill. Some moments passed before she said, "Séamus, I can't question your decision. You must do what's right for you. But just an observation to take with you. Whatever you choose for your future, you should make the best use of the remarkable gift you have. The girls know their gift, even though they may not value it. I know my gift, though it's not the one I would have personally chosen to have. But I'm not sure you know your gift."

  There was a long silence. "OK, I give up," he said. They both gave a small chuckle.

  "I'm finding the words," Alice told him, her head down in thought. Then she raised it, her hair shaking with the sudden movement. "The easy way to say it is that you make us all feel safe, but that doesn't do it a fraction of the justice it deserves. You tell us it's just your job, but I think it's more of a personal battle you're fighting."

  After a pause Séamus said, "Alice, are you sure that's a compliment?" They both laughed.

  "I knew it would come out all wrong," she said. "I don't know your past or your family situation, and I'm not going to ask about it now. But I feel like you've been protecting us as if we were family members. I believe that, no matter what happens to this project or the government's interest in it, your loyalty to us will never be compromised. I agree that the girls themselves are probably safer if they quit now, and you have to put your fiancée first. In fact everyone else will be fine, and it's Séamus FitzGerald's career that will suffer because Wilkie and I botched this up. But you aren't blaming us because you're thinking of everybody except yourself."

  Séamus raised his glass and they clinked drinks. "Now I understand. How do I explain that on my resume?"

  Alice, walked across the room to change the background music and turn it up louder. "Let's dance while I think about it." She embraced him in a slow shuffle.

  The routine did not change that night. In the morning, there were some signs on Alice's face that she had been crying, but her voice seemed as cheerful as ever. After taking the girls to the lab, Séamus mentally braced himself and sent a message to his boss that he needed to talk personally. He was mildly surprised when she almost immediately requested him to call her in the office. She gave him her usual classy smile when her face appeared in the screen.

  "Thank you for taking my call so quickly, Principal," he began. "I've been doing a lot of soul-searching recently. I don't believe I am making a good contribution to this assignment and that has made my overall record with the Agency unsatisfactory. At the same time, I am in grave danger of losing the woman I love by pursuing this career. I've decided I need to assist you to transition me out of this role. I will be submitting my resignation letter this afternoon."

  Not the slightest glimmer of surprise flickered across his boss's face. She gave him another smile, this one appearing more consciously indulgent. "Séamus, let me say I fully understand your feelings, they are only natural. Your job would be a great strain for anyone. However, I am pleased to report to you that, by all accounts, you have been doing superbly there. I've told you before, please do not be the judge of your performance, that is our job. I've told you that, though before this assignment the success of the projects you were involved in was mixed, that was largely not your fault. What you've achieved here has catapulted you way beyond that middling picture and made you quite a star. So congratulations, and please keep up the good work."

  It was like he had crawled along a dark tunnel to open a trap-door which let in blazing sunlight. The words made him dizzy and threatened the euphoria of the original meeting in her office, overpowering any will to resist. Yet how could her words be true? Was she so Machiavellian that she would make up such a story, simply to save herself the job of finding a replacement? Was this dumb agent in this dumb job such a perfect fit, that it made no sense to pull some decent agent out of something really important?

  "Principal, with great respect, during my tenure the failure probability has risen from 60% to 94%. I have been unable to help these girls in any way. I feel quite out of my depth. A fresh minder here would certainly do no harm and could well stimulate a breakthrough."

  His boss took a visible breath which gave the merest hint of impatience. "Agent, the fact that we have 6% left – which I personally think is absurdly pessimistic – is almost entirely due to you. You successfully removed the danger from a local crime ring. Everyone there trusts you utterly. Any other agent would fail at the job miserably – I don't have anyone else who has what it takes. So you're staying there because it is vital for the Agency and for a mission of extreme importance."

  After shooting the stray dog with his bazooka, he was being strafed by a squadron of fighters. What was left in his bunker? Oh yes, he had mentioned love. "Principal, I am really so flattered by what you say. But I have a fiancée and I simply must return to London to repair our relationship. I can't lose her. I really hope you can understand that. It's much more to me than my job."

  The classy smile did not appear, but instead one that did not show any teeth. It was in no way intended to be friendly. It could be considered a polite acknowledgement of sincere sentiments that the listener judged to be woefully misplaced. It also suggested that the listener knew she could not persuade the speaker of the folly of his position. There was no real room left for discussion. It was time to end the talk courteously.

  "Séamus, I hope you will excuse me because I have a meeting starting shortly for which I need to do some preparation. Let me end by saying I really do sympathize with your difficulties and I know we are asking a great deal from you. Your sacrifices will not, I assure you, go unrewarded. But please, do not under any circumstances send me a resignation letter, it's out of the question. If you would like a senior civil servant to visit your fiancée and explain that, right now, your country needs you just as in the same way it called up young fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain whose life expectancy could be measured in hours, I'd be pleased to arrange it. OK if I ring off now?"

  "Of course, Principal. Goodbye."

  The rest of that day, and then the next, gave Séamus a sensation of floating somewhere off the ground, as if encased in a kind of magical rubber suit that would have allowed him to slam into a wall without feeling a thing. He watched sport with the girls, being barely c
onscious of what he was watching. He imagined himself writing the resignation letter but he did not sit down to do it. He felt like he could make sense of nothing, and that included his own personality. By the end of the second day, knowing Alice was going to visit him that night, feeling started to return to his body and mind. Alcohol was calling him in a depressing way. Was he developing a real drinking problem?

  Two thoughts kept floating endlessly around his mind. The first was whether his decision to resign had anything at all to do with his father, and some subconscious thought process that had been triggered by McMahon's remark. It was a stupid, ignorant, misinformed remark, but the fact that a man like McMahon would bother to voice it was like sandpaper constantly rubbing on his skin. The second thought was the undeniable fact that his boss was determined to keep him where he was. Modest man that he was, he had to accept that it exceeded the convenience of having a dumb agent doing a dumb job. His role was making some difference to something, and that something still mattered a great deal to the Agency. All he could think of was that his presence was truly keeping the girls from giving up, and someone – maybe Wilkie – had greater faith that a breakthrough was still on the cards.

  Yet how could he go back and tell Sheryl that he had changed his mind? He couldn't, simple as that. Through his ox-like handling of a delicate situation, he had lost any chance to finesse his position, and forced a flat choice now between continuing his job or his relationship. One of them had to end. Soon, he had to make the final call and move on. He would allow himself a night or two to check all the crazy mental activity that might have contributed to what he had just done. Perhaps talking to Alice might help. After all, she had worked enough with Wilkie on cognitive-science projects. She might have ways of uncovering what drove him always to eliminate the better options in his life.