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“Do you think I’m overdoing it?” Marshall Hawking asked.
David Anderson finished fine-tuning the microscopic device he’d been working on, straightened in his chair, allowed his eyes to adjust and turned to his friend. “Probably,” he said.
“I haven’t even told you what it is, yet,” Hawking pointed out.
“Yeah,” Anderson said, “but there’s one factor you haven’t taken into account.”
“What’s that?” Hawking asked.
“I know you,” Anderson said. He ducked at Marshall aimed a half-hearted swat at the back of his head. “Hey,” he warned. “You break anything in here, it’s coming out of your salary for the next five hundred years.”
“Only five hundred?” Hawking retorted.
“Staff discount,” Anderson shot back. He relented and got out of his chair. “Come on, Marsh,” he said. “Let’s go grab some coffee and you can tell me all about your crazy over-the-top plan to impress Rhia.”
“You’re still okay to have Mark stay with you overnight, right?” Hawking pressed.
“Given that the statistical likelihood of my having a date still stands at zero, sure.”
“Mark likes you,” Hawking said. “No idea why, but he does.”
“Weird kid if you ask me,” Anderson muttered.
The ISO Staff Cafeteria sold decent coffee, which was a good thing, since to Anderson’s mind, the coffee was one of the very few things on the menu that could be consumed without calling in a team of xenobiologists to verify that it was (a) safe for human consumption and (b) not self-aware.
“I’m having a truckload of red roses delivered to the house,” Hawking announced.
Anderson considered this for a moment. “How big’s the truck?”
“Standard delivery van,” Hawking said.
“You’re overdoing it,” Anderson said. “Still, Rhia might like the gesture.” He struggled to find something supportive to say. “Women like flowers.”
“You’re hopeless,” Hawking declared.
“That’s a long-established fact,” Anderson said.
On the evening of Valentine’s Day, David Anderson collected young Mark from day care (having been duly authorised by the boy’s parents to do so) and drove him back to his apartment.
Mark had several toys in his backpack and removed a blue plastic plane, which he proceeded to wave in the air while making noises which apparently approximated to a plane engine in the mind of a small child. Anderson placed a delivery order for pizza, unwilling to trust to his limited culinary skills when it came to dinner.
A cry of distress from the sofa brought Anderson hurrying to establish the nature of the emergency.
“Mark? Are you okay, kiddo?”
“My plane!” Tearfully, Mark pointed at the bookshelf, where the toy plane was sitting out of reach on top of ‘Advanced Micro-Cybernetics’ Volumes 1 through 12.
“Here you go,” Anderson said, retrieving the plane and returning it to its owner.
“Thanks, Uncle Dave.”
“No problem.” Anderson considered the distance between the boy and the books. “That was a pretty good throw.”
“Papa says my plane’s awwo-de-manic,” Mark said proudly.
Anderson ran the word through his head a few times. “Oh,” he said. “Aerodynamic. Right.” He glanced at the toy. Its wings did appear to have been constructed to generate lift.
“Vwwoooom!” Mark announced, and threw the plane again.
This time it landed on top of the entertainment unit.
The sixth time Anderson retrieved the plane, he gave Mark a calculating look. “Hey, bud,” he said, “what if we rigged this thing to come back to you when you throw it?”
Mark’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“I think I can probably manage it. Grab another toy to play with in the meantime.”
Boy and scientist were soon ensconced in the study. Mark played with his toy car on the floor while Anderson tinkered with the plane at his makeshift workbench.
“Uncle Dave?”
“Yeah?”
“How fast can a car go?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“Road conditions, the kind of car, stuff like that.”
“How come you always say that?”
“Say what?”
“Depends. Whenever I gotta question, you always say it depends, then you say a buncha stuff it depends on. How come?”
“Well… mostly because just about everything does depend on other stuff.”
“Why?”
“The world isn’t a simple place, Mark.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s complicated.”
“Why?”
“It’s just made that way.”
“Why?”
“That’s one of the great mysteries of the universe.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Why?”
“Pizza should be here any minute. I ordered your favourite. Go wash your hands.”
“Why?”
“Because no hand-wash means no pizza. Not negotiable. You want pizza, don’t you?”
“Yes!” Mark scrambled to his feet and hurried to go and wash his hands.
As expected, the doorbell rang and the pizza was delivered.
For reasons unknown to David Anderson, Mark was inordinately fond of ham-and-pineapple pizza. Mark was also more than happy to appropriate all the pineapple off Anderson’s share and eat it, much to Anderson’s relief. The scientist supposed that a ham-and-pineapple pizza with extra pineapple could conceivably constitute both main course and dessert in one, but Mark still angled for ice cream when they were done.
Mark was addressing a bowl of vanilla with chocolate sauce when Anderson’s palm unit rang. The caller ID read: Hawking, M.
“What’s up, Marsh?” Anderson asked. “Is everything going okay?”
“She’s not here, Dave!” Hawking said. “I’ve been calling and calling, but she doesn’t answer. I’ve left messages, but nothing! I’m starting to worry!”
“Okay, slow down,” Anderson said. “Rhia couldn’t have gotten the place or the time wrong, could she?”
“No. It was all arranged. I told her I had the table booked at La Dauphine for seven sharp. She had a meeting to go to then she was going to meet me here! I’m worried, Dave. You know she has enemies.”
Anderson took a deep breath. Rhiannon Zarel-Hawking held the rank of captain within Rigan Intelligence. She wasn’t exactly a senior operative, but she dealt with some sensitive material in her work as a Liaison Officer at the Rigan Embassy, and he supposed even junior officers could make enemies. Rhia was good at what she did, after all. “Should I call the office and see if they can trace her palm unit?”
“I already did. They say it’s at home, but she isn’t picking up!”
“What about her car?”
“Also at home. Dave, I’m really concerned! This isn’t like her!”
“I know. Do you want me to head over to the house?”
“No. Just… just keep Mark safe, will you?”
“Okay.”
“Be on your guard, Dave. I mean it. That’s my kid you’ve got there. I’m heading back to the house to see if I can find Rhia.”
“Good luck, Marsh.”
Mark looked up from his bowl, mouth smeared with chocolate sauce. “Was that papa?”
“Yes, it was,” Anderson said carefully.
“Did you tell him we’re having ice cream?”
“Uh… no. I thought maybe you could tell him tomorrow.”
“Okay.” Mark’s attention went back to the slowly-melting contents of his bowl.
Anderson paced the length of the room and back again. What could possibly have happened to Rhiannon?
His thoughts turned to the first time he’d met Rhia. She had been assigned as local liaison to himself, his brother James and Hawking on a mission to Riga. It had been raining heavily and she’d greeted her contacts in the spaceport arrivals lounge looking like a drowned rat.
Marsh had fallen head-over-heels.
If Anderson had been concerned that Hawking would try to take over the operation – which was Anderson’s first field mission – he needn’t have worried. Hawking was so distracted by their winsome liaison officer that Anderson could have built a doomsday device in their hotel room and Hawking wouldn’t have noticed a thing.
The mission had been straightforward: make contact with a rogue scientist who had fled the Gaian Commonwealth and assess what he was selling. Alleki Pier had offered something he called ‘transmutation’ technology which had a lot of potential. Anderson had deemed both the goods and the bearer to be of value and had recruited Pier on the spot.
Six months later, Marshall Hawking and Rhiannon Zarel were married.
The offspring of the union was currently scraping out the last of the ice cream and chocolate sauce from his dessert bowl.
“All done!” Mark announced.
Anderson collected the somewhat sticky bowl and spoon from the table. “Go wash up,” he told Mark. “Wash your face and hands, then brush your teeth and get your pyjamas out of your backpack.”
“Why?” Mark ventured.
“No reason,” Anderson said. “I just thought maybe some kid who did as he was told might like a mug of hot milk before bed, but if you don’t want to…”
“I’m going!” Mark said, and jumped down from his chair.
Mark had been tucked in to the bed in the spare room with his teddy bear and was listening intently as Anderson read aloud from a book.
“I am Cat, who walks by himself,” Anderson recited, “and all places are ali-” His palm unit rang, so Anderson broke off and answered the call.
“She isn’t here!” Hawking cried, anguished. “The tech guys say her phone’s here but the car’s gone and so is Rhia! I’m putting out a bulletin! Something’s happened!”
“Damn,” Anderson murmured. “You could be right. Okay. Don’t touch anything more than absolutely necessary. Marsh, you know how this works. You have to consider the house an incident scene.”
At the other end of the line, Marshall Hawking took a deep, ragged breath. “You’re right. I’ll go outside and wait for the response team to arrive.”
“Call me if you need me,” Anderson said, and listened to the line go dead.
The doorbell rang. “Mark, stay here,” Anderson said. On guard, he left the room, shut the door behind him and ran to the study. The bell rang again as he took his service pistol out of a desk drawer. He checked that it was loaded and headed for the door.
The bell rang again, and this time, the caller knocked urgently at the door.
Anderson braced himself, disengaged the safety catch and stood to one side of the doorframe. “Who is it?” he called.
“Dave! It’s Rhia! You’re not going to believe what’s happened!”
“Is Leonard with you?” Anderson asked, falling back on a code phrase they’d used before.
“No, but Sheldon’s coming over later,” Rhia replied. “What’s wrong?”
Anderson opened the door and re-engaged the safety on his sidearm. “I could ask you the same question! Marsh is frantic! Why haven’t you called?”
Rhia walked in to the living room while Anderson shut the door and hurried to put his weapon back in the study. “I said you wouldn’t believe it,” Rhia reminded him. Her hands were covered in sticking plasters.
“Mommie!” Mark, having heard his mother’s voice, came running to be swept up in a hug.
When Rhia put Mark down, Anderson handed over his palm unit. “Call Marsh,” he said. “Right now.”
Rhia sat down at the dining table. She put the palm unit on the table, set the device to speaker and placed the call while Mark tried out the modification on his plane, throwing it so that it flew around the room and returned to his hand.
“Marsh, honey?” she said. “I’m at Dave’s. Everything’s fine.”
“Rhia!” Hawking almost sobbed with relief. “What happened?”
“Those damned roses!” Rhia exclaimed. “Almost as soon as I got home, this… this… truck turned up with roses! The guy delivered so many bunches of roses, I couldn’t get out the front door! Then I dropped my palm unit in among the flowers and I couldn’t find it! I could hear it ringing and I got my hands torn up on the thorns trying to find it. In the end, I gave up and had to go out the back door, climb over the side fence, let myself into the garage and drive to the restaurant. When I got there, the maitre’d said you’d left so I came here to use Dave’s phone.”
“The… the roses?” Hawking echoed.
“Marsh, I love that you made such a romantic gesture, but tomorrow you’re taking at least ninety percent of those flowers and donating them to charity or something!”
“Oh, gosh, Rhia, I’m sorry. Look, I have to make a few calls and then I’ll be right over and we’ll find someplace nice to have dinner. Without any roses.”
“Okay. I’ll be waiting.”
“Mommie?” Mark asked when the call had ended. “Are we going home now?”
“Not yet, sweetheart,” Rhia said. “Papa’s going to take me out to dinner and you’re going to have a sleepover here, just as we planned.”
“Oh,” Mark said. “Why?”