“I don’t want to know about that. Losers focus on methods—winners only care about results. I’m telling you that’s not Carolus the Bold.
“Jeremiah,” continued Mr. Wendstrom, putting his hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder, “I saw you notice my work in progress when you came in.” He pointed to the portraits and sheets of paper. “What did you think of it? Don’t worry, I’ll tell you what you thought: crazy. Weird. Obsessed. Right?”
“I wouldn’t say obsessed,” Jeremiah said, seizing the opportunity to take a step back in the (ultimately vain) hope that Mr. Wendstrom would be inspired to remove his hand from Jeremiah’s shoulder.
“But you would think it. I’m going to let you in on a secret, Jeremiah—a secret I usually charge a lot of credit to learn in my seminar: obsessed is just what the losers of the world call the winners.”
Mr. Wendstrom gave Jeremiah a moment to absorb this wisdom, tightening the sash on his robe-slash-smoking-jacket in the meanwhile, which at least meant that Jeremiah’s shoulder returned to its blissfully handless state. He took another discreet step back in the hopes of keeping it that way.
“You see how I’ve put the corkboard next to my bed? My theories on who is Andwen Longtail’s real father are the last thing I see before I go to sleep and the first thing I read when I wake up. That’s why—eventually—I’ll figure it out. I’m more obsessed with the work of Michael L. L. Gregory than Michael L. L. Gregory himself,” said Mr. Wendstrom, now tightening his sash to a degree that began to look uncomfortable, both for himself and the sash. “I mean, he can’t even bring himself to buckle down and finish a single goddamn book in four goddamn years, so that his fans have to go on a relativistic cruise just to be able to read the goddamn thing in a reasonable goddamn amount of time.”
Mr. Wendstrom took one more yank at the sash and his face turned red—whether from anger at having brought to mind Michael L. L. Gregory’s unsatisfactory work ethic or from the sash having forced all blood from the waist up into his head—or both—Jeremiah could not say.
“Jeremiah, I’d like to commend you on your effort, but I’m not going to. Losers whine about effort. Winners care about results. I’m going to treat you like a winner, in the hopes that you’ll act like one. You have until—” Wendstrom sniffed and considered how long a true winner would need to complete this mission. “—lunch-time tomorrow to bring me Carolus. Otherwise I will be Highly Dissatisfied—and I will make my dissatisfaction known. Now,” said Mr. Wendstrom, taking the deepest breath his sash would allow, “get this northern blood-throated iguana out of my room, and go out there and win!”
* * *
Jeremiah hurried down the hallway towards Mrs. Abdurov’s quarters, trying to look as nonchalant as it was possible to look while carrying a bundle the exact size and shape of a kidnapped iguana trapped in a stolen terrarium which itself was wrapped in a scraggly towel that technically speaking had also been borrowed without permission.
His plan, so to speak, was to swipe Mrs. Abdurov’s door open (by a stroke of luck he still had the keycard he had encoded last night in his pocket), toss Carol the Northern Impostor inside, drive-by-shooting style, and haul veritable ass down the hallway in case Mrs. Abdurov was inside her room and not, as he hoped, at breakfast. If he happened to run into anyone on the way, Jeremiah had some vague notion about it being best to acknowledge the bundle—point to it, chuckle, shake his head in a “you don’t even want to know” way, without so much as breaking stride. But as he neared the final turn before Mrs. Abdurov’s doorway, he had still not encountered a single soul.
“This whole hallway is going Ultra Premium Luxury,” said a voice from around the corner. “Once we’re in dock we’ll demo every other wall and convert them. These are the projections—conservative—for increased revenue—”
The voice was Grubel’s, and it was coming closer. Jeremiah turned and ran.
* * *
With no time to take Carol the Northern Impostor back to the suite before nine a.m., and uneager to push his luck any further vis-à-vis not running into anyone, Jeremiah made straight for the office, where any lingering doubts about his luck having run out were laid to rest.
“Oh,” said Jeremiah. “Good morning, Mrs. Abdurov.”
He had found her waiting outside the door, muttering in Russian and peering through the glass as if she suspected Jeremiah were hiding inside.
“The sign says you open at nine,” she shouted. “Is 9:02. What is you hold so tightly on your chest?”
“Just my lunch.”
Inside the terrarium Carol the Northern Impostor had suddenly become active, perhaps recognizing the voice of her rightful owner, and Jeremiah nearly fumbled the package attempting to reach into his pocket for the key.
“Give me that,” Mrs. Abdurov said, snatching the wrapped terrarium before he could protest. “Young people today, always multitasking, because you are lazy. You need open the door? Set down your lunch, open the door, pick up your lunch. Lazy is more work in end. Look, already you are sweating. And no wonder, with what you are eating. So heavy, and the smell, ugh!”
Jeremiah opened the door and snatched back the terrarium before Mrs. Abdurov could lift the corner of the towel.
“After you,” he said.
She glared at him as she passed, muttering something that sounded a lot like “taco grubby milkshake.”
Jeremiah put the terrarium behind the desk as he sat down.
“Well, Mrs. Abdurov,” he said, “what—”
“I am robbed,” she shouted in a dramatic whisper. “A theft in the night. I even know who did the theft.”
“You do?”
“Well, yes! I met him here this morning, just outside in the hallway. He is cruel—he toys with me. He thinks he is smart—he pretends to know nothing of the theft.”
“Oh,” said Jeremiah, his mouth suddenly bone dry. “I’m sure if you heard his side of it, you might—”
“Good morning, he tells me, he offers take my arm and escort me to breakfast. Says I look tired, need to sleep better. When he can’t sleep, he says, he drinks hot cocoa. You hear that? Hot cocoa, says the fat snowman.”
Jeremiah, who had done and said none of these things, apart from “good morning”—and whom no one without a very particular agenda would have described as a “fat snowman”—found it very pleasant to breathe again. Said pleasure, however, would prove fleeting.
“But I know you, Tat Drinkwater,” said Mrs. Abdurov, “and your theft in the night ways.”
“You think Mr. Drinkwater stole your—”
“Not think, know! For days he acts so strange. Always looking, always leering. When I leave my room, he always just happens to be passing by. Then last night he strikes—he sends me hot cocoa in middle of the night, and while I am arguing with idiot hot cocoa girl he sneaks in and steals Marya Jana. I see him running out the door.”
“I really can’t imagine Mr. Drinkwater doing something like—”
“Marya Jana,” whispered Mrs. Abdurov at roughly the volume of an auctioneer losing a heroic battle with Tourette’s, “is my iguana. I know, I know, do not scold me—we are not allowed animals on board. But how could I leave my little Mashusha behind knowing she will be dead when I got back?”
“Oh,” Jeremiah said, with what he hoped sounded like the triumph of warmth and common sense over official pedantry, “don’t worry about that. What trouble could an iguana possibly cause—or even two? Your secret is safe with me, Mrs. Abdurov, but I really think Mr. Drinkwater—”
“You ask how you can help me? You use your fancy keycard machine and make copy of Tat Drinkwater’s card. Then you enter Tat Drinkwater’s room, you steal Marya Jana back. I watch and wait in the hall and am Highly Satisfied. So: we go now.”
She stood up.
“Mrs. Abdurov,” said Jeremiah, “I couldn’t possibly break into a guest’s room! And I’m sure—quite sure—that Mr. Drinkwater had nothing to do with—”
Mrs. Abdurov had put her hands on
her hips and was staring at him, waiting. She said nothing, but Jeremiah felt a kind of pre-Pavlovian response as the long shadow of High Dissatisfaction fell across the room. One by one his objections deserted him, until only one remained, the one he could not possibly utter: that Jeremiah knew Mr. Drinkwater to be an innocent party because he himself was the guilty one.
“All right,” he said at last—and then a flash of genius struck him. “Wait! I left the keycard encoder in my room. I have to go get it first.”
“All right,” Mrs. Abdurov said, “we go to your room first, then we go to Tat Drinkwater’s room.”
“No, you can’t be seen in the staff quarters. You go scope out Mr. Drinkwater’s hallway, and I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”
“Why you are bringing your lunch with you?”
But now it was Jeremiah’s turn to be conveniently deaf.
* * *
Abandoning every pretense of dignity or calm, Jeremiah sprinted down the hall, ignoring the startled and questioning looks he drew from everyone he met without so much as the smile and head shake he had prepared earlier. He was making good time, and his plan—which was to return Marya Jana, as he now knew her to be called, to Mrs. Abdurov’s quarters while she was known to be waiting outside Mr. Drinkwater’s—had more to recommend it than most of the other plans he’d dreamed up in the past few days. In fact there was every reason to suspect it would have worked, if he had not taken a corner tight and fast and ran into—literally and physically—Mr. Grubel. Fortunately their heads did not make contact, or both could have been knocked unconscious, but the Financial Officer’s glasses flew off in the collision, along with the recorder into which he had been speaking, still laying out his plans for the new Ultra Premium Luxury suites. For a few seconds both were too dazed to speak.
“Jeremiah?” said Grubel. He picked up his glasses and put them on, as if he might be better equipped to believe what he was seeing through their lack of lenses.
At that precise moment the terrarium thumped once and jumped a few inches—Marya Jana protesting the recent collision, perhaps, or relieving a hunger pang by lunging at the remaining cricket.
Mr. Grubel’s eyes narrowed behind his newly replaced glasses, and narrowed further. Just how much narrower they eventually got Jeremiah could not say, as somewhere around the 3 mm mark he broke into a dead run back the way he had come.
“Jeremiah, stop!” said Grubel. “Come back here! I know you can hear me!”
His voice was not growing quieter and more distant, as Jeremiah would have hoped. To the contrary, Jeremiah could hear the Financial Officer’s feet hit the hallway even with those pillowy shoes of his. It would not be too much longer before Grubel—who must have been hitting the treadmills in the Einstein IV’s desolate gym pretty hard—overtook him. But now they were close, entering the female staff’s quarters, and summoning the last burst of speed he had within him Jeremiah kicked his heels up and reached the doorway of Katherine’s suite with a good fifteen feet of multicolored industrial carpet still between himself and his pursuer. In one fluid motion he withdrew the keycard from his pocket and swiped it over the access panel, hardly breaking stride as the door opened and closed behind him.
There was no time for raised arms or victory laps, however. His eyes darted around the suite from terribly obvious hiding place to terribly obvious hiding place. They all seemed terribly obvious. Ten seconds later Grubel pounded at the door and began to ring the bell.
“Jeremiah!”
The door muffled Grubel’s voice, but not his anger.
Jeremiah could have hidden the terrarium in Katherine’s bedroom and attempted to prevent Grubel from entering on the grounds of not invading her privacy without her present, but he had already involved her more than enough in his own problems. Then there was the bathroom, but even among terribly obvious options that seemed so terribly obvious as to be tantamount to a guilty plea.
“I know you’re in there! Open up right now.”
Jeremiah stowed the terrarium, still covered by the towel, on the far side of the sofa. He tossed his sheets and blanket on top, plumping a sheet here and smoothing a blanket there so the pile didn’t look so recently made, and then—taking a few seconds to gather himself—walked over and opened the door.
For all that Jeremiah disliked Mr. Grubel, it was impossible to deny that the Financial Officer had a certain kind of authenticity. For example, at this moment he looked authentically like an office worker who had just displayed surprising speed and stamina during an on-foot pursuit of a subordinate while wearing clothes that could not quite keep pace with him. One silver cuff of his pants had ridden up a silver sock, and both shirt tails had declared their independence from his pants altogether. Grubel seemed to realize, through his crooked glasses, that the nature of the contest had changed, and that Jeremiah’s new calm—however manufactured—represented some kind of advantage. He took a moment to straighten himself out, acting all the while as if Jeremiah were not there.
“Jeremiah,” he said when he had finished, and walked right past him through the door.
“How can I help, Mr. Grubel?” asked Jeremiah.
“What’s this?” asked Grubel, pointing at the empty terrarium that Mr. Wendstrom had given Jeremiah—and which, in his rush to hide the other, non-empty, terrarium, Jeremiah had forgotten was still in plain sight on the table.
“A terrarium,” said Jeremiah, with all the nonchalance he could muster.
“Why do you have a terrarium?”
“Is it against the rules? I’ll get rid of it.”
Grubel resumed his search.
“Where is it, Jeremiah?”
There was not much surface area to explore, and the Financial Officer was already getting very warm as he neared the edge of the couch. Something in Jeremiah let go—there was no longer any way out, no trick he could conjure to prevent Grubel from finding Marya Jana. He felt no anger, no fear—only acceptance as Grubel whipped the sheet and blanket away from the pile at the end of the couch, revealing the ratty towel beneath.
“Is there something you want to tell me about what’s under this towel, Jeremiah?”
Jeremiah shook his head. Somehow it seemed nobler to go down in a blaze of bravado, denying to the bitter end.
Grubel whisked the towel away, like a magician about to reveal that his assistant had vanished from the box where he’d put her. Bravado or not, Jeremiah couldn’t watch this part.
“Jeremiah,” said Mr. Grubel.
“Yes?”
“Why do you have another terrarium in your room?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Jeremiah said.
“Not to me,” said Mr. Grubel.
As Grubel lifted the terrarium from behind the arm of the couch, Jeremiah had to admit his mystification was understandable. In fact, Jeremiah shared it: for apart from the sad layer of sand at the bottom, the terrarium was completely empty. Not so much as a cricket, live or dead, graced its plastic walls, and certainly not a northern blood-throated iguana, which would have been very hard to miss. The top of the terrarium was not quite closed.
“Well, Jeremiah?”
“It’s simple, I—collect terrariums.”
“You collect terrariums?”
“Or—terraria. Always have, since I was a child. Is that against the rules?”
Mr. Grubel handed the terrarium to Jeremiah and began to search the rest of the room, which did not take long.
“And what’s this?” the Financial Officer said, pointing at the only other object of interest to be found.
“A bandora, of course,” Jeremiah said.
“A what?”
“It’s like a lute.”
“What is it doing here?”
“Mrs. Mayflower asked me to perform some routine maintenance on it before the talent show,” said Jeremiah.
“Did you say Mrs. Mayflower?” said Grubel. His face took on a shade of white that Jeremiah considered reserved for skim milk.
“That’
s right.”
“Did you see her?”
“Of course—she brought the bandora to the office.”
Grubel sat down on the sofa, not entirely—it seemed—by choice.
“What did she say?” he asked.
“She said that she wanted to perform in the talent show, and that she needed some work done on her bandora first. What else would she have said?”
“Good,” Grubel said. “That’s very good. And you’ve got the task in hand? I suppose your musical background is proving useful.”
“I guess so. More or less.”
“Excellent, well done. Can I help in any way?”
On several first dates back on Earth, one young lady or another had inquired, over tacos or tiramisu, after the identity of Jeremiah’s “spirit animal”. Jeremiah had never known how to answer. But now, listening to Grubel’s offer of assistance, Jeremiah realized that his spirit animal was a bewildered and deeply suspicious lamb being nuzzled by a wolf.
“How do you mean?” Jeremiah said.
“Do you need resources? Assistants? Someone to cover the desk while you work on this?”
“I don’t think so,” Jeremiah said. “Unless—you wouldn’t happen to know the difference between wood glue and glue for wood?”
“I could put a researcher on it for you.”
“That’s all right,” said Jeremiah, realizing the topic of why the bandora was clamped and glue indicated might be better avoided. “I have it in hand.”
“Good,” said Mr. Grubel again, standing up. “Good, yes. Keep up the good work, Jeremiah. Oh, and this belongs to you,” he said, handing the second terrarium to Jeremiah. “Wouldn’t want to break up your collection.”
He nearly stumbled twice on his way out.
* * *
The instant the door closed behind Grubel, Jeremiah began to rip through the room. He folded and unfolded the towel and sheets and blankets: nothing. He lifted the sofa and shook the cushions: nothing. He got down on his knees and inched over the carpet with his fingers, as if he were searching for a lost button instead of a missing reptile. But all his exertion turned up nothing even vaguely resembling a northern blood-throated iguana.
World Enough (And Time) Page 15
