A Pocketful of Stars (Applied Topology Book 1)

by Margaret Ball

  Chapter 5

  The spook did deserve some credit for knowing where I’d want to go if I were going to have a friendly drink with him. Not much credit, though. After all, he was a professional collector, sifter, and sorter of information. And it wasn’t that hard to discover the oldest business in Austin.

  Yes, I’m talking about that beer garden; what did you think I meant? That guff about “the oldest profession,” applies to less civilized places. In Texas, selling beer is the oldest profession. We have a long history of getting our priorities right. (So I was born in New Jersey. Doesn’t count. I got here as soon as I could.)

  He was also pretty good at claiming space. Within minutes of arrival, he had identified the best of the shady spots at a table under the trees, snagged two chairs, and arranged for a pitcher of cold beer and a couple of frosty mugs. (If you keep them in the freezer, it’s like having ice cubes in your drink, without the melting and dilution. Did I mention that we have our priorities right?)

  After inhaling the first refreshing mug of beer I did begin to wonder why he’d worked so hard to get me here. Perhaps his suspect also liked beer? Was I cover for a covert investigation? The thought made me snicker quietly into my second mug.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I don’t see anybody who looks like a terrorist. But then, what do terrorists look like?”

  “Remarkably like normal people,” Lensky said grimly. “Why, are you going to tell me they spin their plots over a pitcher of beer?”

  “Isn’t that why we’re here?”

  “Actually, no. Are you laboring under the illusion that everything I do is about work?”

  I gave that some thought while working on my second mug. “You do give that impression.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. I’m human enough to enjoy having a drink under the trees with a pretty girl.”

  I started liking him a little better. I even regretted blowing up at him this morning.

  “That’s okay,” he said easily, “I admire a woman who can explode with so much elegance and elan. Not to mention alliteration. I don't think I've ever been called an ignorant, intellectually challenged imbecile before. Besides," he added, "you didn't call me 'Boris,' and that was a nice change."

  He wasn’t glancing around; his eyes were fixed on me. Very dark, very blue. In the shade here, at the beginning of evening, the air was actually cool and pleasant, but for some reason my face was getting hot. I probably needed more beer.

  "I thought that whole Boris-and-Natasha joke got old pretty fast," I said. It was only the truth. "And - I don’t much care for that kind of teasing. Jokes about people's names," I amplified, so he wouldn't think I disapproved of teasing spooks. I didn't. I just thought it should be done more cleverly.

  "Don’t you now? I've noticed that everybody calls you Lia. What do you have against a lovely name like 'Thalia?'”

  Nothing at all, the way he pronounced it, with a broad A. "Oh, people can't decide how to pronounce or spell it, that's all." Damned if I was going to tell him that everybody else rhymed it with ‘failure’ and thought that was just ever so funny.

  "Ha! Try going through school with a name like Bradislav. And it was even worse before I talked my mom into letting me change it to that. I was christened 'Wladislaw.'" He spelled it out, and I had to admit it.

  "You win. Your parents were even more vicious than mine."

  He put his hand over mine, as if we were old friends. After a couple of beers, in the warm soft air under the trees, it seemed perfectly natural. "Does it have to be a contest?"

  He was sitting so close now, it would have been easy to lean towards him and rest my head on his shoulder, just like any normal girl on a date with her boy friend. Why did that even occur to me? I didn't do it, of course. I was a professional, and so was Lensky, and this wasn't a date.

  More like a temporary truce.

  There was an ominous cackling above us; the grackles must be moving in for the night. I decided to ignore them.

  That wave of blond hair rolling back from his forehead was really quite attractive. So were his hands and wrists, if you liked that kind of big, muscular look. Which, actually, I did. I took a sip of beer to cool myself off.

  "Your wrists must be twice as big around as mine.”

  “Regular practice at the range.”

  “Oh, come on. Your gun can’t be that heavy.”

  “Oh, would you like to handle my… gun?”

  Just when I started thinking that I could like the man, he let off one of his crude double-entendres. Change the subject.

  “You could have built those muscles doing deep-sea fishing, or wrestling, or…” Oops. Not a good choice of examples. “Do you have any life outside The Agency?” I asked quickly, before he could invite me to a wrestling contest. Much more of this conversation, and my mind was going to be right down in the gutter where his appeared to reside.

  “I’m… working on the concept.” He took a long pull on his beer. “Haven’t had a lot of spare time, up to now.”

  I looked politely interested; he touched on some of the high – or maybe low - points of his life. A father who died young, growing up in a not-so-good neighborhood, after-school jobs to help with rent and groceries, taking eight years to work his way through a night-school degree in Criminal Justice….

  “An outsize sense of responsibility.” I suppressed a hiccup.

  He looked unhappy. “Balancing my older brother, I guess. He had no sense of responsibility at all.”

  “Had,” sounded very, um, past-tense-ish. Another death in the family? Or just a rift? He zipped back into the impersonal, very quickly. “Just working, instead of working and going to night school and writing term papers on the train, is still kind of a new experience for me.”

  Who outside of New York said train, not subway? And with that accent… Not a surfer boy, after all. More like a Jersey boy. I had a couple of cousins who sounded just like him.

  “You haven’t been with the agency that long, then?”

  “Long enough. Finally got that degree five years ago. But… I’ve been busy with other stuff until recently.”

  Paying back student loans, probably.

  “Is that where you got that outsize chip on your shoulder? Working your way through college?”

  “Ha! Where did you get yours? It’s so big you must get back pains from carrying it around.”

  “No such thing. I’m just… not good with people. A lot of us aren’t.”

  “A lot of who? Greeks? I thought you guys were always dancing and swigging retsina.”

  I gave him a dirty look. “Aren’t you a little young to have been influenced by Zorba the Greek?”

  “I like old movies.”

  “Anyway, I didn’t mean Greeks. Besides, I was born in America. I meant mathematicians.”

  Lensky pursed his lips and whistled. “The world-view is impressive. You really do think you’re a separate, superior caste, don’t you?”

  “Me? No. The real mathematicians are doing actual research and discovering new mathematics. I’m just a girl with a bachelor’s in math, with a really good intuition for point set theory problems and this funny trick of applying it to the real world.”

  “So… I understand Ingrid’s going for her Ph.D. Does that make her a real mathematician?”

  “She certainly thinks so!”

  “I’m not interested in what she thinks.” He leaned even closer. “You, on the other hand, do interest me. I’d like to know more about what you think.”

  There was nothing between us but my mug, which seemed to be empty again; how had that happened? I bought time by refilling it and chugging the contents. Understand, I was not flustered. I just wasn’t ready to spill my personal thoughts to a near-stranger.

  "Let's start with something easy. Did you always live in Texas?"

  "Regrettably, no. My parents moved here when I was in middle school."

  "From New Jersey?"

  I was startled. "What, h
ave you got a dossier on me?"

  "Regrettably, no. Though it's a thought... I'll have my minions get right on it. You haven't quite lost the accent."

  "Ugh."

  "No, it's cute. A Texas-size attitude coming out of a Jersey girl's mouth. You love it here, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "This is the only place I've ever felt like I belonged. When I started at the university and stumbled on Dr. Verrick's topology classes, I felt like I was coming home."

  "Don't you think that would have happened in any university you went to? I'm sure there are mathematicians at Princeton who'd have made you feel right at home. Or MIT. Yale. Take your pick."

  "Yes, well, none of those were options for some reason. Any more than they were for you."

  "Family couldn't swing it? Even with - I'm sure you could have gotten scholarships."

  "Family wouldn't swing it. According to my father, it's a waste of time for girls to go to college because they'll just get married and have children. Also, nobody will ever want to marry a freak like me who not only went to college but majored in mathematics instead of early childhood education.” I tilted my beer mug.

  "He doesn't have a strong need for intellectual consistency, does he?"

  “Got it in one.” I refilled my mug from the pitcher. Talking about the family made me thirsty.

  “So… now that you’ve got your degree, what are you going to do next?”

  “Continue to manipulate objects in real space via topological visualizations?”

  “If that’s what you want to talk about.” Why did he look disappointed? “Or we could talk about what you were planning to do with your life before you discovered this talent, or even what you’re planning to do with it now. I mean, mathematics isn’t exactly a religious vocation. You can date… get married, have children…”

  “Oh, sure. Just as soon as I meet somebody who isn’t totally freaked out by my… abilities.” I’d faced this fact last year, when my problems started.

  When I broke up with Rick.

  OK, to be honest, when Rick dumped me because “all this was just too weird for him.”

  “I can’t marry a normal person,” I told Lensky now. “I can’t even room with a normal person. Ingrid and I don’t share an apartment because we’re such good friends, we share because neither of us has to worry about the other one freaking out when something a little bit unusual happens.”

  “But that’s only an extension of the way you’ve always felt, isn’t it? That your intellect cuts you off from normal life?”

  “Well, it does. There aren’t many men in the math department eager to date a girl who can come up with a proof faster than they can.” Rick had been my one counter-example, and he hadn’t actually asked me out until I was having trouble in class.

  “And you couldn’t, of course, consider hanging out with anybody who wasn’t a mathematician.”

  “It makes life simpler,” I said, “if you stick to people who speak the same language.”

  “Ah! ‘Mathematicians are like Frenchmen; whatever you say, they translate into their own language, and forthwith it means something completely different.’”

  “Yes, that’s your typical normal attitude.”

  “Not necessarily mine. Goethe said it.”

  That raised my brows. “And studying Goethe is what part of a criminal justice degree?”

  “I read a lot. You shouldn’t be so quick to assume that everybody who’s different from you is a moron.”

  And he shouldn’t be telling me what I should feel. I raised my beer mug. “Why not? Statistically, it’s more often true than not, and saves a lot of time.”

  “And cuts off a lot of possibilities.”

  I was about to refute that when a raucous “Gaak! Gaak!” right over my head totally startled me; I hadn’t been paying attention to our surroundings.

  Lensky started swearing. He’d come off worse than I had; the grackle might not have startled him, but it did poop in his beer. Fortunately it got the mug, not the pitcher.

  Remarkably good aim, those birds. I toasted the responsible party with my fourth mug.

  The next morning, while I was working on my third cup of coffee and regretting having had a pitcher of beer for supper, Ben came across to the Research side looking disgustingly bright and eager for action. Worse, he walked Jimmy in with him. The computer nerd didn’t have as strong a stomach as Lensky; he looked like somebody staggering off a small boat after crossing the English Channel. Being led along an invisible Möbius strip tends to affect non-mathematicians that way.

  “Got the target’s office address from Boris,” he announced.

  “You guys are working already? This early?” Now I was beginning to feel like an unhappy sailor. Today was unnecessarily bright, the grackles outside were noisier than they really needed to be, and I did not need to be surrounded by early-morning enthusiasm. I was only here because Ingrid sings and does exercises first thing in the morning, and walking to Allandale House was better than sticking in ear plugs and cursing her.

  “What’s gotten under your skin?”

  “Be nice to the lady, I expect she’s hungover,” said Lensky, a beat behind Ben and Jimmy. He didn’t look even mildly greenish after being taken over the virtual Möbius strip. But then, it wasn’t his first rodeo. “Last night I was impressed by the amount of beer she could handle. Possibly over-impressed.”

  Ben blinked. “You went out drinking with Lia? And survived?”

  “I must have twice her body mass,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah, but she trained with ouzo-drinking Greeks from Jersey.” Ben had met my parents a few times, once at a wedding where the toasts were flowing freely.

  “Ah, that explains why she scoffed at retsina.”

  “I’m disappointed in you, Lia,” Ben said. “Letting a spook out-drink you?”

  I fished out a couple more aspirin and washed them down with my cooling coffee. “It wasn’t the beer. It was forgetting to eat.”

  “You do that too much anyway,” Ben scolded me. “It’s not healthy.”

  “Well, if people keep trying to force stale tuna fish sandwiches on me, what do you expect?”

  “What’s your worry? She looks healthy enough. She’s certainly not wasting away just yet,” Lensky said, and his eyes conveyed an appreciative appraisal of my shape. Which really isn’t all that worth appraising; I’m just a short dark girl, not very memorable. Not fat, not skinny, and definitely not striking like Ingrid. He was just taking his chance to make me uncomfortable. Why couldn’t he stare at Ingrid like every other man in the known universe?

  I turned to Ben. “Why don’t you take Bo - Lensky to your office and see if knowing the exact address makes it easier to get into the computer?”

  That got rid of him. As a side benefit, Ingrid turned up just then, and Jimmy got that stunned look again and followed her.

  I closed my office door and crunched a couple more aspirin.

  Much too soon, all four of them were back. “Knowing an address isn’t good enough,” Ben announced. “I really do need to be physically closer to the actual computer.”

  “Is that safe?”

  Lensky shrugged. “The man calls himself a financial advisor. I doubt that he’s carrying.” A slight, barely perceptible movement of his hand towards his hip. Was the gun some sort of security blanket for him?

  “How would just outside the building work?” Ingrid asked. “There are some nice oleander bushes where we can hide.”

  “How do you know?” She couldn’t have zipped down to the building and back already. Ben hadn’t been busy that long.

  “Google Street View.”

  I goggled. (As opposed to Googled.) “Since when do you use Google Street View?”

  “I downloaded it on her laptop,” Jimmy volunteered, “while you two were trying to get into Crowson’s computer.”

  “Let’s see if just outside the building is close enough,” Ingrid said. “I’ll
come with you and do Camouflage while you peep at the computer.”

  “I’d better come too.” If Ben was teaching Camouflage, I wanted to be there.

  “And me,” Lensky said.

  Ingrid sniffed. “There aren’t that many bushes.”

  Riiight, that was why we were sending the blonde Valkyrie instead of the pint-sized Greek, was it? Because she was so inconspicuous?

  But I wasn’t actually ready for a dose of blinding mid-morning sunshine, so Ingrid got her way.

  After she and Ben left, Jimmy announced that he was going to do some conventional research on this Crowson, if somebody could help him get back to his office on the public side. “It’s not that hard, this way.” I started him on the correct path and watched him dwindle to a line, then a blinking line, then nothing.

  That left only Lensky to get rid of. “Don’t you have anything to do?”

  “Are you always this friendly in the morning?”

  “Only after I’ve been plied with way too much beer. The least you could do is get me some water.”

  Only, of course, he couldn’t, because the plumbing was all on the public side of the third floor and he wouldn’t be able to get back in.

  “Why,” I wondered aloud, “does everybody use my office as a meeting room?”

  “It’s too much trouble doing your magic shuffle to pass the wall,” Lensky said, “and all the extra chairs on this side are in your office.”

  So they were.

  Finally the spook’s muscle came in useful: I made him move all the extra chairs into Ben’s office. This wasn’t a completely trivial chore, because Ben had craftily picked a very small office. However, there was room for the chairs after I stole Ben’s big box fan. After Lensky stacked the chairs to fit, he went off for lunch muttering about being exploited by unscrupulous women.

  Chapter 6

  This next bit is out of order, because I didn’t actually know about it while I was eating lunch and going through the Student Union’s supply of cold bottled water; if I had, maybe I could have done something to mitigate the fiasco. I only learned about it afterwards, from Ben. Ingrid refused to discuss the matter.