FORTY-ONE
THE FIRST part of me to wake up was my smile.
I said, "Mmmm," and curled affectionately around the warm female body next to me. I slid my hands around her waist and up to cup her breasts.
She said, "Excuse me," and slipped out of bed. I heard her pad barefoot across the floor and into the bathroom. I heard the sound of a toilet flush. I waited for her to come back.
Instead, there was the sound of water running. A bathtub? I opened my eyes. I sat up. Wasn't she coming back?
She came back into the room, wearing a long dark robe suitable for a convent. She glanced around and made an expression of distaste. "What happened here last night? What is this-? Marshmallows?" She gave me an odd look. Almost hostile.
She wasn't beautiful any more. She was small and mean-looking. She seemed scrawny.
She wasn't Tanjy.
"We had-a marshmallow fight," I explained. "We were going to pick them up-"
She looked at me as if I were a cockroach in her bed. "Um-I'm sorry.... It wasn't my idea."
"Mm hm," she said, picking up marshmallows from the floor. "It never is."
"Are you the, uh-owner here?"
"The host? Yes, I am." She was making no secret of her annoyance.
"Oh," I said, feeling suddenly very weird. Like an intruder. I felt like I should pull the blanket up in front of me. Like a shield. "I, uh, guess I should be going then."
"Yes, you should."
I still didn't move. I said, "I'm sorry for the mess. Can I help you clean up?"
She stood up then and faced me. "No. I'd rather you didn't. I'd rather you just got out. Now, please."
I slid out of bed. I stepped on marshmallows. I started gathering up my clothes and pulling them on as quickly as I could.
As I was buttoning my shirt, I looked over at her. "Can I ask you something?"
She dumped the marshmallows into a wastebasket and straightened, brushing the powdered sugar off her hands. She waited for me to continue.
"What happened to Tanjy?" I asked.
She shrugged. "She went on to the next."
I said, "Look-I know this is difficult for you, but I get the feeling that there's something very wrong here, and I don't understand."
The Chinese girl said, "Wait a minute." She stepped into the bathroom and shut off the running water. When she came back, I was just tying my tie. She said, "Do you know what we call telepaths like Tanjy?"
I shook my head. "Carpetbaggers. "
"Carpetbaggers?"
"Mm hm. They take over your body, your house, your life for an evening. They get your body drunk, they take your body to bed with strangers, they get stains on your best silk dresses, they get sticky marshmallows all over your sheets and rugs, and then they disappear in the middle of the night, leaving you with a hangover, scraped legs, chafed elbows, a sore back, and three days of cleaning. Not the least of which is explaining it all to last night's trick."
"Can I help pay for the damages?" I asked, reaching for my wallet.
She stiffened. "I am not a whore, thank you. No, you may not. The service will cover any costs. Besides, it's not your fault. You're as much a victim of the carpetbagger as me."
I shoved my wallet back into my pocket. "Can I ask you one more thing?"
"Go ahead."
"Well-maybe this will sound stupid, but I thought-that is, Tanjy said that telepaths don't have much identity. That is, you don't have much attachment to body, house, clothes, that kind of stuff. But, you ... ?" I pointed around the room and shrugged and looked at her.
The Chinese girl looked annoyed again. "Right. That's the carpetbagger's justification again." She said, "The truth is that some telepaths do and some telepaths don't. My duties require me to stay local. Twice a month, I rejoin the network and go worldwide. I have work that has to be done on-site. That's the limit of my telepathic participation. I hate leaving my body in the pool, because I never know who's going to be in it while I'm gone or what damage they're going to do."
I stood there, feeling very guilty. I wanted to apologize, and at the same time-I didn't want to. I didn't want to admit that Tanjy/Ted-and I had been like two small boys playing with a girl's body while she wasn't home. I felt like the time my cousin and I had been caught looking in my sister's underwear drawer-only this was worse. Far worse. This time I didn't have a cousin here to share the blame. And we'd been playing with far more than her underwear.
I said, "Um, I understood-I mean, I was told that there were certain ... agreements between telepaths. "
Her eyes narrowed. "You don't understand anything, soldier."
"I guess not," I said. I picked up my hat. This Chinese girl was nasty. "Well, I'm sorry," I said. "I really am."
"Yes, you said that. You boys always say that. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to take my bath. I want to feel clean again." Outside, on the street, I could feel my anger smoldering. Dammit! I felt dirty now too.
I should have punched him when I'd had the chance-except it still would have been the Chinese girl who woke up with the bruise.
It wasn't fair!
Dammit! He'd done it to me again!
FORTY-TWO
THERE WAS a large security lockbox sitting on my desk. It opened to my thumbprint. Inside were three very fat mission books. Somebody had done a lot of work last night.
I spent most of the morning going through the books, my astonishment growing as I did so.
They'd listened to what I'd said.
The first book outlined how the military would deliver the presentation team to the target site and provide protection without being a physical presence. The choppers would be extensively camouflaged.
The second book described the duties of the observation team and how they would keep the physical presence of their monitoring devices to an absolute minimum.
The third book discussed what was known and wasn't known about the worms and the bunnies.
But it didn't say much about how to contact them.
I had an idea about that. It was something Ted/Tanjy had suggested. Listen with all your soul.
I tried to imagine sitting down and talking to a bunnydog. I couldn't. The best I could imagine was joining their cluster. Finally, I went to see Dr. Fletcher.
I stuck my head in her office door and knocked, "Got a moment?"
She looked up from the report she was studying. She had a sandwich in one hand. "Oh, James. Come on in. Did you read the books?"
"Yeah, that's why I'm here." I snagged a chair and sat down opposite her. "I assume I got the job."
"That was never the question," she said. "Do you want some tea?"
"Oh, today it's only tea, huh?"
"Hey-coffee's for special occasions. You're on the team now. I don't have to be nice to you any more." And then she asked, "What's the problem?"
I explained to her about the briefing books. There was nothing in them for me.
She put the last bite of sandwich into her mouth, nodded thoughtfully, waited until she finished chewing and wiped her fingers on a napkin. "Uh huh-and how would you make contact with the bunnydogs?" she finally asked.
"This is going to sound real weird, but I think General Poole was right. Dance naked with the bunnydogs."
"An interesting idea-" she said. She patted her mouth and tossed the napkin aside.
"I can justify it-"
"You don't have to. I know the reasoning."
"Huh?"
"We talked about this for a long time last night. We pretty well explored the subject."
"Really?"
"The military sat the meeting out. We accomplished a lot. I didn't put it in your book because I wanted to see how much of it you'd figure out yourself. You did good. Now let's see if you can get the second half of it. How would you prepare for such a dance?"