by Glenn Smith
Heather walked in carrying a plate of steaming food in each hand and approached him as he finished entering the details of their move. “Thank you, Sweetheart,” he said as she handed his plate to him. “Smells real good.”
“You’re welcome,” she answered.
He gazed after her with pride as she turned and walked away, heading toward the sliding door that led out onto the balcony, and couldn’t help noticing the way the sun shone through her robe and silhouetted her hips and legs, making it look as though she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. As a matter of fact, now that he thought about it, he couldn’t be sure she was wearing anything underneath it. He listened when Heather opened the door and heard the sounds of both vehicle and pedestrian traffic coming from outside. A road and parking lots, sidewalks, and it was Monday morning. Base personnel were out and about, going to work or wherever else they might have needed to go.
“Heather,” he called after her.
She stopped, turned partway back, and looked back at him. “Yeah, Dad?”
There was no tactful way to ask. “Are you wearing anything under that robe?”
Her gaze fell to the floor between them, but only for a moment. Then she raised it to him again, he eyes filled with confidence, admitted, “No,” and then asked him, “Why?”
So she’d intended to walk out onto the balcony with almost nothing on, in broad daylight, regardless of the fact that there were people out there, and while that disappointed Nick, at least she’d answered his question honestly rather than trying to lie to him. That was progress. “I didn’t think so,” he replied. “The sun shines right through it, Heather, and this is a workday. There are a lot of people out there going to work or wherever. If you’re going to eat your breakfast out on the balcony, you need to put some more clothes on first.”
“If I take the time to get dressed now my breakfast will get cold,” she countered.
“Heather...”
“We’re three floors up, Dad,” she reminded him. “No one’s going to look up here, and even if they do, the sun will be ahead of me from their angle. They won’t be able to see anything anyway.”
She had a point, he had to concede. Her argument was actually a logical one, and when he didn’t bother pursuing it further she turned and walked onto the balcony, and the door closed automatically behind her as her robe started fluttering in a gentle breeze.
Some changes took a little longer than others.
Speaking of change, Mirriazu still hadn’t gotten back to him in response to the holophoto of Graves’ message scratched into the sidewalk. That wasn’t like her at all. She always got back to people when they were waiting to hear from her, regardless of any personal misgivings she might have. Especially when the stakes were so astronomically high. Yes, she was angry with him, but the matter at hand was serious enough to compel her to look beyond that anger. Dylan Graves had made it to 2168 alive and well, and the young Intelligence agent who had shown Nick the holophoto had assured him that he’d have his supervisor get it to the president. So why hadn’t she contacted him? Four days now. Surely she’d seen the holophoto by now.
“Well, if she won’t call me, I’ll call her,” he mumbled under his breath. He switched the terminal over to communications mode and punched in Mirriazu’s private code...
And ate his entire breakfast and almost finished his coffee while he waited... and waited... and waited.
“What do you want, Mister Hansen?” the Earth Federation president asked impatiently when her image finally appeared on the screen, letting her native Swahili accent come through a lot more strongly than usual and looking none too pleased to hear from him. She looked better—a little more rested than the last time he saw her. Still skinny as always, but not nearly as tired and gaunt. That at least pleased him, even if her icy greeting did leave him feeling put off.
“Madam President, has anyone from the agency stopped by recently wanting to show you a particularly interesting holophoto?” he asked her directly, passing over the pleasantries that she seemed in no mood to suffer through in favor of getting right to the point.
“Yes,” she replied matter-of-factly.
Yes? Was that all she had to say? Clearly, she didn’t intend to waste any syllables on him unnecessarily, and that irritated him whether it was his own fault or not. Mirriazu was a mature, intelligent woman. Holding petty grudges was beneath her. “Well... don’t you think you should discuss it with me as the former head of the agency that made that holophoto possible?” he asked her, letting some of that irritation come through in his tone.
She looked right at him, glaring as though the monitor screen were only a pane of glass between them, and answered, “I am discussing it, Mister Hansen... with people who still work at that agency.”
Ouch. That stung. Talk about stabbing him in the back and twisting the knife. That was even less like her than holding a grudge—not at all like her, in fact. She must really have been angry with him, or at least extremely annoyed. Or perhaps more hurt than angry or annoyed. No. She was definitely angry with him, and she had every right to be.
“I haven’t forgotten that I’m retired, Madam President,” he told her, just to remove any doubts she might have had, “but given the depth of my prior involvement, don’t you think I should be included in any discussions on the subject? I might have something valuable to add.”
Shakhar drew a deep breath, exhaled loudly, hesitated for what seemed like at least half a minute, and then finally acquiesced. “All right, Mister Hansen. Come see me tomorrow and we shall discuss it. No promises.”
“Thank you, Madam President. I understand. I’ll see you tomorrow, and I’ll have Heather with me, if that’s all right.”
“Yes, of course. I would love to see her again.”
Her, but not him... obviously. “All right, good. We’ll see you tomorrow.” He reached for the button to end the call, but the screen went dark before his finger even got close. Mirriazu had beaten him to it.
That done, and with their moving arrangements confirmed, Nick stood up and went back into his bedroom to get dressed—jeans, a lighter blue short-sleeved pullover, and a comfortable pair of sneakers. No more uniforms. Then he took his breakfast plate and coffee mug into the kitchen, put his plate and fork into the washer and refilled his mug, then headed back through the living room on his way to join Heather out on the balcony.
He reached out to the ‘open’ button as he approached the door, but then paused to gaze at his daughter for a few moments before he tapped it. She’d finished her breakfast and had set her empty plate and glass aside on the small circular white metal patio table in front of her, and was kicked back and relaxing in one of the twin deck chairs, legs outstretched, feet up on the table’s edge, ankles crossed. Nick could only imagine what the view through the railing’s narrow, widely-spaced balusters from the street below might be, but he preferred not to. Her hair had dried for the most part and several light flyaways were wafting in the gentle breeze blowing in from her left. Her robe was still fluttering, billowing in front as it caught that breeze, baring a good portion of her right breast and forcing her to fold her hands in her lap to prevent it from blowing open below the belt. As her father, Nick felt none too pleased by the display, but as an objective observer he had to admit that she was growing into a very beautiful young woman.
He tapped the button, and as the door slid open Heather dropped her feet to the balcony floor, sat up in her chair, and looked back over her shoulder at him, almost as though he’d caught her doing something wrong. “Hey, Dad,” she said, pulling the front of her robe closed a little more sufficiently as he set his coffee down on the table and then reached out and grabbed the back of the other chair and dragged it over beside her. “How was your breakfast?”
“Very good,” he answered, deciding to let it go—to let her lack of attention at covering herself slide—as he looked out over the road and the parking lots and the sidewalks. He didn’t want to upset her or embarrass h
er first thing in the morning, and no one down there seemed to be looking up at them anyway. At her. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied. Then she asked, “So when are we moving?”
“Tomorrow,” he told her as he sat down. “I’ve made arrangements for the movers to be here no later than oh-seven-hundred.”
“So we have to get up real early tomorrow and pack,” she concluded.
“Actually, we have to pack tonight after dinner,” he told her as he reached for his coffee. “One small carry-on with a couple days’ worth of clothes and whatnot, and the rest for shipping to our house in Colorado.”
“Why? Where are we going for a couple days?”
He sipped his coffee, the answered, “We’re going to Geneva to see Mirriazu.”
Heather smiled excitedly. She’d always liked her father’s old friend, the president—the woman had always been so kind to her—and hadn’t seen her in quite some time. “Really?”
Mm hmm,” he intoned as he took another careful sip, nodding slightly. Then he told her, “I would like you to dress a little more conservatively than you usually do. We are talking about Mirriazu, and she is the president of the whole Earth Federation, after all.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Yeah?” he asked, looking at her with mild surprise when she didn’t offer even a little bit of argument, despite her recent tendency to try and always be on her best behavior. After all, her choice of wardrobe remained the one area where they routinely failed to see eye to eye.
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “Like you said, Dad, we’re talking about Mirriazu. I know how she feels about certain things and I wouldn’t want to offend her. I’m just glad for a chance to see her again.”
Wouldn’t want to offend her? What about offending your own father? But he let that go, too. He wanted them to have another good day together.
Chapter 21
Their flight had departed late that night and Heather had slept virtually the entire way, from minutes after liftoff to minutes prior to touchdown. Nick had eventually fallen asleep as well, but his slumber hadn’t been nearly as restful as Heather’s apparently had been—she was wide awake now and excited to see Mirriazu. He’d had the nightmares again, right around mid-flight, which had caused a bit of a stir among the other passengers when he started moaning and groaning and shouting in his sleep. Fortunately he’d awoken just as he squeezed the trigger, just as he always seemed to, and had gathered his wits and calmed down before his bit of a stir grew into a full-blown security incident. When a couple of the passengers sitting nearby inquired as to whether or not he was all right, he’d explained his behavior as exactly what it truly was, at least according to his doctors. Traumatic nightmares brought on by post-traumatic stress.
Upon arrival, he and Heather had caught a ground shuttle to the Hotel Eden on the Rue de Lausanne near the southern tip of Lake Geneva’s west bank, an old-style hotel that had become famous for its old-fashioned tan stone and white stucco façade and bright red awnings, located just over a mile north of the Presidential Complex. There were plenty of hotels a lot closer to the complex, of course, but the Eden stood only a short walk south of the Botanical Gardens, which they planned to visit while they were there. Unfortunately, they weren’t the only visitors who’d thought of that. The hotel’s suites had all been booked, so they’d been relegated to one of its so-called superior rooms—a room that provided two separate beds but forced them to share a single bedroom, which had made Nick a little uncomfortable. The arrangements seemed inappropriate to him, though they hadn’t seemed to bother Heather in the least. At least its balcony provided them with a nice view of the lake and the distant foothills and mountains beyond.
They’d gone right to bed and managed to catch a few more hours of sleep, though he’d had the nightmares again, of course. Then they’d enjoyed a nice relaxing brunch together in the hotel restaurant, gotten ready and headed out, and actually arrived nearly half an hour early for their appointment with Mirriazu. Now, as they sat waiting on the large overstuffed couch in her reception room, Nick sipping from his third cup of coffee of the day while Heather drank down another glass of orange juice, Nick actually felt pretty good—wide awake and alert. But they’d been sitting there for almost twenty minutes and he feared that if they had to wait much longer he was going to start feeling drowsy. The change in time zones had made their night a short one.
He’d known Mirriazu for years and she’d seen him in everything from formal dress grays to jeans and tee shirts to swim trunks, but this visit marked the first time he’d ever come to see her in her office without being in uniform, so he could only hope that he’d dressed appropriately for the occasion. This certainly wasn’t a backyard barbecue, but neither was it a formal occasion. It was a one-on-one meeting. Thinking that a full business suit might be too much, he’d instead chosen black dress slacks, polished black dress shoes, and a nice blue button-down open-collar shirt. The day was warm and sunny, as though mid-summer had suddenly arrived overnight, so Heather had worn her knee-length pale yellow sundress with the daisy print and a pair of light tan sandals that added an inch or two to her height that she’d just bought in the hotel department store this morning. As a fifteen year old girl—as the daughter who was just tagging along to say ‘hello’—she could still get away with dressing comfortably for occasions such as this.
The room was just as he remembered it, though it seemed a lot quieter than the last time he was there without Chairman MacLeod sitting beside him, running his mouth incessantly. The forest green couch they were sitting on, the twin matching chairs placed at precise angles on each side of it, the dark falsewood coffee table a couple feet in front of them, the rather plain but not necessarily unattractive and pleasantly mannered young college woman Regina, Mirriazu’s paid intern and acting secretary, seated behind the large if ordinary reception desk. He’d remembered Regina from the last time he visited—Chairman MacLeod’s Timeshift Resolution briefing—and had greeted her politely when they arrived. She had returned that greeting with a warm smile and had told him how nice it was to see him again, so he’d stood by and spoken with her for a few minutes, just to be polite. After all, there was no reason for him not to be polite. She’d reminded him that she was an exchange student from the States majoring in Political Sciences at the University of Geneva, and that she would be finishing up her senior year internship in about six weeks, at the end of June.
Heather had watched the woman engage her father in conversation with interest, and had remarked afterwards, when he joined her on the couch to wait, that it was about time they find him a woman.
He hadn’t known how to respond to that.
“Regina,” Mirriazu’s voice called over the ceiling speaker directly above the intern, “you can send Mister Hansen and his daughter in now.”
Regina smiled brightly at Nick and Heather once more as she tapped the button on her comm-panel and replied, “Right away, ma’am.”
Nick stood up and gave Heather a hand—the couch was so large and overstuffed that her feet barely touched the floor when she sat on it—then led the way over to Mirriazu’s beautifully crafted old-fashioned-style door. He knocked twice and waited for the obligatory “come in,” and then opened the door and walked into his old friend’s spacious but sparsely decorated office only to be greeted by a somewhat less than old friend-like expression. President Mirriazu Shakhar did not look happy to see him. She was wearing a traditional African sarong as she often did when she intended to spend the entire day in her office, this one a very beautiful deep aqua-blue with black trim, which indicated to him that his choice of business casual attire had been the right one.
At least his wardrobe wouldn’t offend her.
“My goodness, look how you have grown!” the thin, graying, sixty-four year old Bantu woman exclaimed suddenly, her dark complexion seeming to brighten as she looked around him and smiled. She stood up behind her large antique oak desk and raised her slender arm
s toward Heather as the younger woman dashed around her father and approached her. Then, when they embraced, she added, “You are becoming such a beautiful young woman, Heather!”
“Thank you, Mirriazu,” Heather replied, beaming. Then, when they released each other, she corrected herself apologetically. “I mean... Madam President.”
“Nonsense,” the president replied. “To you I shall always be Mirriazu.”
Heather smiled even brighter, then asked, “How’s your family?”
“They are just fine, thank you,” Mirriazu answered. “My daughter Adimu just brought another grandchild into the tribe a week ago.”
“Oh! Congratulations!”
“Thank you. She named him ‘Hamisi’ because he was born on a Thursday.”
As his young daughter and his old friend—he sincerely hoped he wasn’t going to have to start thinking of her as a former friend—caught up with what was going on in each other’s lives, Nick tuned them out, gazed past them, and stared out through the large, tinted plastiglass window in the back wall beyond Mirriazu’s desk. He was standing too far away from it to be able to see any of the complex or of the surrounding neighborhood more than twenty stories below, but the early afternoon sun shining down over the distant snow-capped peaks and the numerous boats sailing across Lake Geneva’s sparkling sapphire surface made for a beautiful view nonetheless. He almost wished he and Heather were moving to a home out there along that pristine shoreline somewhere, except that if they did, the Presidential Tower would likely serve to remind him on a daily basis of the heights from which he had fallen.
