[Here by accident? You might want to first read the Introduction and Chapter 1.]
After his next hour with them, Gabe sincerely hoped the Lanes would tell him something to summon up his sense of humor. He wondered if he’d ever laugh again.
Still not moving beyond the entry hall, Gabe asked them to provide one good reason — “Two would be better” — not to show them the door. They looked back and forth at each other, and then quickly dispensed with the formalities of introduction: identifying themselves beyond mere names, and establishing their bona fides. Adrienne went first.
“I’m a trust-fund baby,” she said. “My surname before marrying Eldon was Burghar — yes, with an h and an a.”
“No way. You—”
“Yep. My dad was Matt Burghar. That Matt Burghar.” Like ninety percent of the rest of the world, Gabe didn’t need to be told who that Matt Burghar had been: founder and chief of research for MagBurg Labs. (The “Mag” came from magnetic, popular theory supposed. In fact, it came from Magaziner, the maiden name of Matt’s wife Dolly.) Thirty-some years ago, MagBurg had introduced the world to the MagDrive Engine. Everybody thought it would reverse or at least slow the effects of centuries of hydrocarbon-burning machinery. Everybody was proved wrong, but in the meantime Matt and Dolly and, evidently, little Adrienne had become almost ridiculously wealthy.
“I don’t suppose you can offer me more than just your word of honor on that.”
She smiled, and pulled from the pocket of her coat two laminated-plastic cards. The first was a simple photo ID: a security badge for MagBurg Labs, identifying her as employee number 000003. The second was a standard state-supplied RFID card. “Got a swiper?”
Gabe gestured at a small table against the wall, close to the door. “The vase with the fake flowers there.”
Adrienne waved the RFID past the vase and a display lit up alongside the door jamb. Adrienne Lane, it confirmed, née Burghar, husband Eldon, current address out on the mountainside at the far side of the city, current employer MagBurg Laboratories LLC, date of birth thirty-seven years ago. She moved the card up to her right eye, held it there for a beat, and re-swiped the vase. CONFIRMED, said the display.
Not quite wanting to accept yet that Matt Burghar’s freaking daughter stood before him in his foyer, Gabe tried one more test: “You’re kinda young to be MagBurg employee number 3, aren’t you?”
“Dad’s little joke. It was my seventh-birthday present.”
“‘It’ the card?”
“No, ‘it’ the employee number. The card’s legitimate, don’t worry. It’s always worked there. And so have I.”
“How about you?” Gabe said, turning to Eldon. “You with MagBurg, too?”
Eldon laughed again. “Oh, heck no. I don’t have a job at all, just ride around on my wife’s coattails. A wastrel and a dilettante.”
“Don’t take him seriously,” said Adrienne. “He won’t let you if you try. He’s not—”
“She’s right, I’m sorry, I need to take you seriously — no: I’m not a MagBurg employee. I’m an amateur astronomer. Or let’s say, well, technically not an astronomer. Not so much stars and planets, you know, but galaxies and universes. Nebulas. Quasars, pulsars, black holes. All that.”
He moved to the table and vase before Gabe could ask him. His RFID confirmed his identity, too. Current employer: N/A. His readout, however, included a supplemental affiliation: the International Amateur Cosmological Union.
Now Gabe was really stumped. His rational mind knew that you could find harmless (or not so harmless) nutcases even among the idle (or not so idle) wealthy. But that didn’t quite explain the presence of this couple in his home. He stalled for time.
“My RFID’s upstairs—”
“We don’t need it,” said Eldon. “Full name Gabriel Mazarin Naude, photographer, late wife Carolyn, et cetera, et cetera, am I right?”
Whoa. They could’ve dug up the stuff on photography and Caro from any of dozens of public sources. But the middle name — the Mazarin? That was documented nowhere, not even on the RFID. His family had passed that middle name down for centuries…
“Okay,” he said, “let’s just take it for granted that we’re all who we say we are. Let’s move into the living room and you can tell me what you’re really here for. ‘Cause for the life of me, I can’t imagine what ‘help’ people like you think you can get from a guy like me.”
—-
The Lanes had removed their overcoats and draped them over the center cushion at the back of the sofa. They sat at opposite ends of the sofa now. Eldon was to Gabe’s left — next to an end table, on which stood the tumbler of water he’d almost downed in one gulp. Adrienne sat at the other end, holding her hands around a steaming mug of ersatz tea, black. They looked at each other — a prelude which Gabe was beginning to recognize — and Adrienne nodded a little to her husband.
“Kali,” Eldon said. “K, A, L, I. You know Kali?”
Gabe nodded. “Indian deity. Goddess of destruction, right?”
“Something like that. The story goes that in a battle, Kali got so caught up in the frenzy that she started laying waste to everything in creation. The god Shiva saw it and, to stop her, threw himself at her feet on the ground. She stomped on him, too, then looked down, recognized him, and came to her senses.”
Gabe thought back to a college art-appreciation course. “Don’t they usually show her all bloody?”
“Yeah. That’s from the battle. Except for the blood on her foot, of course—”
Adrienne interrupted. “Can we stop talking about blood?”
She mock-grimaced and smiled, but Gabe wasn’t convinced the smile was genuine.
“So, Kali,” he said. “What? You collecting pictures of her or something?”
“No. This has nothing to do with what you might see, Gabe, if you looked through a camera lens. This has everything to do with what I’ve seen, looking up through a telescope. Kali. On her way.”
__________________________
I think I’ve resolved last week’s dilemma — “Why am I posting this first-draft stuff here?” But I won’t be ready to reveal that for another couple-three installments, I think. Sorry. :)
I left a comment earlier this evening and it seems to have disappeared. Did your blog think it was junk?
Nope — you just left it on the page with the complete chapter, rather than here. :)