Next: II.A Rainy Morning Not Spent at the High School Dance
| Previous: The Moose Jaw Incident

The Moose Jaw Incident

Chapter 1

I: A Misty Morning Hunting Clones

The rain turned the sky gray and obscured even the near distance. Strangely enough, though, the diffuse light from the sky made for more saturated colors. So, where on a sunny day, the heather might appear a muddled gray, today it was a deep, rich purple. The black and gray stems of the bracken and the green of the heather, the tall grasses of the highland meadow, all served as a background for that most Scottish of colors, the purple of the heather in flower.

The whole maneuver was directed by shouts and whistles from the local constables. The line of figures afoot, all dressed in foul weather gear, stretched up the slope from the shingle by the sea inlet to the road at the crest of the ridge. It formed eddies around the frequent outcroppings of rock. It stopped often to re-form as the humps and swales that distorted the slope caused the line to lose its trim.

Periodically, the line would stop and a knot of bodies would form around a point on its leading edge. Other figures would converge on the spot and a discussion would ensue. A call would go up and this one or that one would descend from the tangle of vehicles parked helter-skelter in the roadway at the top of the ridge to perform some arcane ritual and then climb wearily back to the road to stand, miserable in the cold and damp, waiting another summons. Then the line of searchers would form up and move on.

It was a good thing that most of the finds were on the upper third of the slope, or the specialists would have been hard put to clamber back up to the warm vehicles and hot tea and coffee after each summons down the hill.

At every stop, without regard to the particular skills of the specialist called down from the road, there were two figures who watched without comment except to each other.

In fact, they had almost no interaction with the locals, despite the fact that the entire affair had been called for by them and was being staged for their sole benefit. They pointedly did not clamber back up the hill, but trailed along behind the line of searchers, following a path that led from find-to-find, thus staying at about the same height on the slope.

The two were a man and a woman. The man was tall, over six feet in height, broad-shouldered and heavily built. The woman was rather shorter and slighter of build. Both had dark hair and wore glasses, but otherwise there was little resemblance between them.

The man wore a broad-brimmed parson's hat. His rain cape was made of wool and was apparently treated to repel the rain, which it did quite well. He was the one that the local constables approached when they had questions or needed instructions.

The woman wore an odd billed cap that looked like it might be leather and had various gadgets of glass and black metal attached to it by swivel mounts. Most of the time, there was a cross-haired reticule flipped down before her right eye and a miniature camera lens kibitzing from above her right ear. A slender boom microphone swooped down from an insert in her left ear to perch in front of her mouth. A close look would reveal a wire running down her left arm to a single-button remote switch in her gloved left hand: a push-to-talk switch.

She was dictating a running commentary, taking frequent breaks and stopping altogether when there wasn't anything to report. At those moments, which were most of the time, she would flip the mike aside and the reticule up and sometimes even lift the cap to brush back her dark curls which, despite the late-spring highland chill, were becoming sweat-soaked.

She was there as the plenipotentiary of the agency that had dispatched them--the Center for X Studies at East College of the Americas. She was the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and--if necessary--hands of the Center's director, Terence Hallow Britten. She was one of only six individuals entrusted with this responsibility, who possessed the requisite relaxed attitude coupled with a relentless attention to detail and flawless personal integrity.

He was the commander of the Center's special operations section, the Troll Action Teams, whose agents provided skill, strength, speed, and a killer instinct at the sharp end of Center policy. He was, at present, serving on detached duty from the TAT, working within the organizational structure of the Center's Office of the Director.

This extraordinary arrangement had come about because his usual partner was in the CFXS Medical Center recovering from a week-long series of traumas. It had been his request and the Director's judgment that he should not be assigned tasks in line with his regular duties until his partner — who was his life partner, lover, and friend as well — should be found fit to return to duty herself.

Unbeknownst to Drummond, Terry had been considering separating the two from the TAT for a long time anyway. She had felt that Drummond and Dolly's talents were being underutilized on the frankly workaday tasks the TAT attended to.

And it was well past time that the TAT got a commander who was one of their own. Drummond's next in command, (after Dolly), was a young up-and-coming Troll named Robert J., whom everyone called Bobbo. It was everyone's assumption that he would take over command of the TAT sooner or later.

Terry was very close to deciding that sooner was better and that it was about to become now. She wanted to bring Drummond and Dolly inside her immediate sphere of influence as special plenipotentiaries to the Office of the Director, with duties somewhat askew from Sappho's cadre of Messengers and Emissaries, the famous M and Ems.

This small chore — a delicate matter of cleaning up after a major battle-cum-rescue-mission on foreign soil — was the final test. Not only did Drummond have to handle the physical housekeeping, but he also had to deal with the sometimes prickly sensibilities of local officialdom.

All of which was of great pith and moment, but the two of them had more important things to discuss. Such as their respective girlfriends.

"So what do you think?" Drummond finally broached the subject they'd been dancing around since they'd landed Sappho's BMW sky-cycle Gay Deceiver down the coast that morning. The subject on both of their minds since they'd left Columbus in the early hours of the morning: a meeting between the two dolls in the offing for later that day.

Sometimes, life on the edge could get to be a bit hard to believe. Sappho's new long-term lover was the intimidating Xe Doll. Xe and Gabrielle Dolly had been an item far too recently for comfort and had done some serious damage, both to each other, and to their surrounds.

Gabrielle Dolly had pulled out of her tailspin into autodestruct a hair ahead of disaster. Xe Doll had not, but had continued down the path of self-immolation from which she had only recently been hauled back by the figurative scruff of her neck at the hands of the dark poet in black leather who led the M and Ems.

Then Xe had heard of Dolly's week in Hell and had thought to visit her former friend and lover in the hospital.

"They've gotta get together," Sappho had insisted to Drummond.

He'd agreed, recognizing that the two had issues to work out between them.

"The hospital might be the best place for it, too."

But Dolly initially refused to see Xe, finding the prospect too painful to contemplate.

"I--can't," she said to Drummond, tears filling her big, green eyes.

"Dolly, you can't hide from her forever. You have to end it or it's going to eat you alive."

She laid her cheek against his chest and wept silently.

"The only other choice I can see that you have is to go back to her."

"No!" she wailed. "Never! I'll die first!'

"Hey! Hey! Hey! Chill the drama. Nobody's asking you to. I'm just trying to illustrate the binary nature of the decision."

"Why do I have to choose between you?" she asked, perfectly reasonable, despite her weepy eyes and runny nose. "I love you both."

And that's her dilemma, he thought. She can't really let go of either of us. And why should we force her to choose?

"You don't, darling. All you have to do is figure out a way that will divide yourself fairly between us that won't hurt me or Xe or Sappho or you."

"That's ridiculous! Nobody can do that!"

He said nothing; just held her. Then, after a long silence, she said:

"Am I being a terrible bitch?"

"No, Baby Doll! Not at all." He stroked her hair and pulled her tighter against him, trying against all reason to shield her from the coming blow.

"You're just figuring out what the rest of us have had years to learn," he said. "You can't always get everything you want--or even need. And all of the people you love in your life won't always fit together just right for you. So you need to make choices. I hate myself for being the one to force you into this choice, but I wouldn't be doing right by you if I didn't at least try to help you face the truth."

And then... "I have to go to Scotland for the Center. Will you be OK? I kind of think it would be better if I weren't here anyway. I'd probably just be in the way. But if you want, I can tell Terry..."

"No. It's alright." She sniffled once and smiled bravely, the tears still spilling out of her bright, green eyes. "I'll do ya proud." She gave his jaw a powerless, slow-motion punch, then stood on tiptoe to kiss him goodbye.

All the way across the Atlantic, encased in the Gay Deceiver's force field fairing he ran the litany:

I trust her love. She's not a fool. She knows what she wants and I'm it. I'm not going to come home to an emotional bomb damage assessment. I do trust her love. There will be something left for me to come home to. Oh, Gods! Please let there be something left for me to come home to. I am doing the right thing. I am! I know I am!

It had not been his most convincing performance.

"Drivin' you crazy, isn't it?" Sappho asked quietly, but with a sly little dig that she couldn't quite resist. He's being hit by typical male insecurity. He doesn't really understand her emotional complexity and it frightens him to death. I wonder if it would do him any good to realize that the understanding of the complexity doesn't really help.

"For what it's worth, me too," she said.

He looked sideways at her with a weak, remote smile. "Thanks. A lot. That helps."

"Yeah," she sighed. "I figured it would."

Next: II.A Rainy Morning Not Spent at the High School Dance
| Previous: The Moose Jaw Incident