“Okay, well thank you for your service. What’s all that got to do with me?”
“You are about to be taken by scrambled eggs who don’t give a shit about you or your project. They just need funding for the shit they really want to do that Congress won’t authorize.”
Bill recognized ‘scrambled eggs’ as the term given to the yellow filigree embroidered on the visors of flag officer’s hats. Still, he remained silent; for all he knew this could be some sort of security test dreamed up by the CIA to tarnish him and take over many of his projects and budgets.
Russ took him in and decided to go on. “Okay, keep not talking, but hear what I am telling you. There are two special ops subs that can crack your buried treasure from miles off — in two weeks. They are already bought and paid for, and their operational expenses are, I bet, one quarter the cost Merkel and the rest gave you.”
“How do you know these boats are still on line?”
“I retired last week.”
“Look, Commander, I hope you’re doing what you are doing out of patriotism and not some beef you have with Navy brass. In recognition of your service and your rank, I am going to make believe all that happened tonight was I shook twice and flushed once. Have a good retirement.”
As Bill walked back to the restaurant, Klaven called out, “Try the Halibut!”
At the White House the next day, Peter Remo stopped dead in his tracks when he attempted to walk into Bill’s office. The scene in front of him made him smile. A sound engineer pressing headphones to his ears sat at a rolling cart, which held a mixer and a digital recorder. Seated across from Bill was a woman with a stopwatch and a big book full of what seemed like script pages. Seated next to her was a man with his chin resting between his thumb and forefinger listening intently to every syllable coming from Bill. In front of Bill was a microphone with something that looked like a fly swatter made out of panty hose material between the mic and his face. Right below was a small easel with loose pages on it and around him there were stands holding thick, heavy blankets, Pete surmised these were sound deadening blankets to ward off the roomy sound only a microphone could hear.
Bill was smiling as he talked, the director sitting across from him having recommended it because a smile affects the tone of voice, making the speaker sound more energetic and happy. “In our next show, can Tiffany and Diego outsmart a robot mouse controlled by the freeze-dried brain of a real mouse?” Bill finished the line and looked to the director.
The director gave an okay sign, then held up his hand, waited, and pointed at Bill.
“Come on now, Diego, say cheese!” Bill added, as if taunting the boy who wasn’t there.
“Cut, circle it. Okay, that’s a wrap. Thank you, Bill, We’ll see you in four weeks.”
“Bye Mo, Jenny, take care,” Bill addressed them as they bugged out in an instant. Bob, the sound guy, stayed behind and took down the sound blankets and stands.
“Peter! You’re early.”
“Radio star?”
“TV actually. I do a PBS show for kids called Science Beat, and a Science And Technology Policy Review once a month for U.S. Information Agency. We are hoping CNN picks it up.”
“So which was this?”
“The PBS show. I shot the opening and did a series of wraparounds on camera a few months back. These were the audio tracks for the coming attractions.” Bill rifled through his desk and came up with a DVD. He walked over to the TV and popped it in. “Tell you what Pete, you check out this DVD of the show. I am going to hit the men’s room.”
Peter watched the opening of Science Beat. There was Bill on the fifty-yard line of his alma mater. As he cocked his arm back to throw a pass, his body changed into a computer graphic of the musculoskeletal system as he propelled the ball. The ball was shown in a perfect spiral (what else?), bulleting through the air. Around the spiraling ball were vector lines and parabolic arcs, as well as math formulas on lift and drag. Then the panning camera caught the big Jumbotron in the stadium and zoomed into the screen until the pixels were as big as baseballs. Peter could see the alternations of the pixels from red to blue to green that create a picture, shooting down the cable to the camera, as well as the splitting of the image across a chip that digitized the picture. After going through the lens, flipping and shrinking through the focal point, the picture was right side up as it came out of the last lens element. The subject of the picture was a woman in the stands wearing an iPod. Her earphones became one half of the cutaway showing the diaphragm of the earbud on the opposite side of the eardrum. The vibration off the earbud sympathetically vibrated the eardrum and the signal was transmitted through the tympanic bone into the brain as impulses. On the screen, her brain began to spin and transformed back into the football. When a wide receiver caught the football in the end zone, he looked down and saw he had caught a brain, not the ball. At the end, a graphic announced “Science Beat with Professor ‘Wild’ Bill Hiccock.” A series of credits ran over drawings by da Vinci and Michelangelo, ending in a computer-aided design of an airplane on a huge screen. The CAD drawing of the plane started to materialize as the SR-71 Blackbird at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, as Bill appeared standing on the wing of the fastest supersonic spy plane in history.
He held a rock in his hand as he spoke to a circling camera giving a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the plane and the museum. “Today we are going to see how a rock in a river led to the development of the fastest commercial aircraft in the world, as Roscoe Banks takes us on a trip that goes back three hundred forty-five years and proceeds at supersonic speed to land in a secret Air Force base during the Cold War.” The image of Bill standing on the wing digitized into a stream of dots and was replaced by Roscoe standing near a river as people dressed in Middle Ages attire beat clothes against rocks to clean them.
Just then Bill re-entered, “Well, what do you think?”
“Don’t quit your day job.”
“Hey pal, education is my day job. All this cloak and dagger crap is extracurricular.”
VI. I LOVE THE NIGHT LIFE
There are many reasons men don’t wear leather pants anymore, but in the after-hours clubs of Switzerland, the diffused euro-sexual gender ambiguity was in full view. In this case, the view was that of Raffael Juth’s simulated-cowhide- covered butt. The observer was Hanna Strum, an attractive woman whose long curly blonde locks dangled and played peek-a-boo with her pushed up breasts that ‘Victoria’ was not trying to keep secret. Raffey, of course, exhibited all the male characteristics of trying not to stare while staring that tickled Hanna at a level she dared not let on. After he caught her looking a few times, he drummed up the courage to walk over to her breasts and ask if she’d like to dance. She made sure not to look at him approaching; however, another woman watching would have noticed the subtle “girls up” pose she morphed into.
“Hi, I am Raffael,” he said as he bobbed and weaved a little to place his face in her line of sight as she scanned the room.
“Hi.” She gave him a quick glance then continued her not-interested investigation of the gyrating room.
“I was wondering if you would like to share a dance with me?”