Alien Tongues (15 page)

The reference to jail triggered Séamus's recollection of Tina's fear.  So that was another incentive for them to quit without success – they could be sure of staying alive.  Equally significantly, if he were to release them from this obligation by quitting himself, he would probably be doing the one thing most likely to keep them safe.  That was ironic – Séamus FitzGerald doing his job best by getting the f*** out of the way.  So much for his illusion that he was doing the girls a great favor by "never giving up."

After a silence, he asked, "Alice, what are the chances now that we're going to get something worthwhile?"

"According to my modeling software, not too high," she told him.  She opened a notepad and typed for a few moments.  "We're down to about 6%.  We were at about 40% during the first week.  And that's for achieving something academically worthwhile.  I have no idea if it will be sufficient for the ultimate aim of the government.  Remember, they want to do more than just get a dissertation out of this.  Surely they want to solve some gigantic, life-or-death problem."

"A 94% chance of academic failure, which probably means a 99% chance of government failure." Séamus drained his glass of beer and took another can from the fridge.  "Why were our expectations so much higher going in?"

Alice gave a sad laugh.  "We bet on the favorite, and the outsider came in."

"Chrissy would appreciate that irony.  Please explain."

"The combination of the language and numerical abilities in so many of these types of gifted people led us to believe that they operated within the same region of the brain, and that somehow language and numbers were interchangeable within a grammatical structure.  Now it seems there are two distinct regions, which just happen to either share this gift or both not to have it.  So in a sense, we now realize we know less than we thought we knew.  Progress of a sort!"

Séamus laughed.  "I make that sort of progress on most days."  He stared out of the window into the dark.  "So we just grimly hang on and hope?"

"Until the girls give up or Wilkie pulls the plug."

"Want to stay over tonight?"

"Yes, sure."  Alice replied immediately, then paused before adding, "Are we going seriously into the whiskey, is that it?"

He nodded.  He didn't want to lie awake all night worrying about the future, and the best way to prevent that was mild intoxication combined with the warmth of Alice's back.  It worked effectively, though he worried he was somehow using Alice, despite the terms of their "deal" seeming quite clear.

When they woke the next morning, neither of them seemed to want to get up immediately and face the day's work.  Having about half an hour to spare, they continued to lie there, still wrapped against each other.  Finally Alice turned to face him and ran her hand through his hair.

"My handsome James Bond," she said.  "I'm not silly enough to imagine I'll be your James Bond Girl but I want to say, I really appreciate the way you've treated me.  I know I'm really going to miss you when this ends."

Séamus felt grateful to her for easing his conscience.  He knew he was going to need her company over the coming weeks and now she had given him permission to view it as a temporary measure.

Thereafter, she stayed over in his room about half the time, and would probably have made it more if she had not felt the need to spend the remaining nights with her mother.  Faced with increasing chances of failure, it helped make their lives more bearable for the time being.  Séamus realized how important that extra dose of comfort was to him when suddenly the girls themselves started fighting.

The incident happened about two weeks later when the sequence of unsuccessful days had begun to feel endless.  Each day the girls began with about an hour of sign language where they could prepare ideas for the use of numbers.  According to the transcript – admittedly an imprecise translation – the conversation took the following turn:

Jenny:  No matter bad things, I think we stick together like four sisters.

Chrissy:  You not my sister, you Japanese.  Japanese monsters attacked China, kill millions

Jenny:  We had bad past war.  We are sorry, it was mistake.  Long ago, no one today did this.

Chrissy:  You have guilt of parents.  You are not sorry.

Tina:  Crazy!  You have guilt of your parents, Chrissy?

Chrissy:  You not talk.  Thailand and Japan friends that time.  See Bridge on River Kwai.

Tina: Chinese killed millions Chinese.  Chinese hate own parents?

Chrissy:  I told you, not your business.

Jenny:  Chrissy, you very cruel.

Phyllis:  But she right, Jenny.  Japanese did same Philippines.

Tina:  Phyllis, not help Chrissy

Phyllis:  But good remember.  We remember always.

Jenny: Why remember?  Bad are dead.  Now we heal, make friends.

Chrissy:  Japanese say wrong always. 

Alice decided to stop the day's session so that Séamus could discuss the problem with the girls.  He first met with Chrissy in her room to ask why she had started the conversation.  He was not accusing in any way, simply referencing the conversation and asking why such a topic had come to mind.

"I had been reading about Manchuria and Nanking last night," Chrissy said, staring at her glass of tea.  "I'd been chatting with my father the night before and mentioned how nice Jenny was.  He got angry and told me to read about Japanese atrocities in China.  Of course I remember some stuff about it in school but I couldn't be sure what was really true or not.  So this time I was able to read Western accounts of it.  If Japan's friends think it was very bad, then in must have been."

Séamus nodded.  "Yes, it was very bad.  As a result, the West killed two million Japanese civilians, mainly through burning them alive during fire-bombing raids.  Since then, an army of Cambodians killed two million of their own people.  So who should Cambodians hate: the people who actually committed the crime, or themselves because they are Cambodians?"  He paused.  "So does it make any sense to blame Jenny?"

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."