It dripped down his chin...just a bit. He grinned happily, scooping it off with his
finger and popping it back in his mouth. "What did you call this
again?" he murmured, munching happily.
"Pizza!" Terry laughed, enjoying Cort's
first taste of it almost as much as the man himself.
The two couples sat around the low coffee table at Terry's place, having dinner together before their final discussion about their departure the coming morning. An intensive month of training and preparations had just passed. Sid had proclaimed them ready.
He was eager, almost too eager Terry thought, to get
the mission underway. Remembering what
Sid had said about Maximus' being his other half really worried the K&R
agent. He feared, with good reason, that Sid had...plans...for the General that
he'd not shared with the rest of them.
With no guns allowed, he was concerned for Diedre's
safety, but they had thoroughly discussed many options for her, had decided she
should stay as close to the others as possible, trained her as well as they
could in the use of a knife and self-defense
Cort had needed no practice with the whip. Like his guns, it was an extension of his
arm. So they set him to learning archery, a natural progression...regression...however
one wished to take it...for an eye that knew well how to aim. He took to it
marvelously.
"Robin Hood would have been proud!" Bud
proclaimed, beaming.
Another, different, part of his training was watching
movies, especially Gladiator, which he studied frame by frame. He felt drawn to
the General, a spiritual man who had lost everything he held dear, everything
that was familiar to him, everything that had been his reason for living. He
began truly looking forward to meeting Maximus. That Maximus looked like his
older brother, served only to make Cort's feelings stronger. Once Rachel had
come upon him, sitting alone, the DVD paused at the SPQR scraping scene. He
When he became aware of her presence, he said softly,
"This is the moment, Rachel, right here. Here is where the sadness
lies. More than the tears in
Rachel had held him then, loving him all the more for
his beautiful heart, hating it that he knew so well what Maximus was feeling.
It came to her then that, perhaps, there was more to them wanting Cort on this
mission than the mere fact he was from the past himself.
On other days, she had her own ideas about movies,
feeding him a steady and delightful diet of the Wizard of Oz, all 6 Star Wars,
all the Lord of the Rings. He watched Proof of Life three times, beginning to
understand Terry much better. "Do all the incarnations of me know only...loss?"
he asked her one day.
She thought of East, of Colin, of
"Bunnies?" he queried. "What's so good
about bunnies?" So she played Rough
Magic for him. He liked the ending.
All four of them ran several miles a day and ate
disgustingly healthy diets. Tonight's
pizza was a big change and they ate it with much gusto, especially Cort. Even
though they had been over the process of the transfer through the warp, Terry
went over it again. This would be the ultimate test of its capabilities. Never had anyone traveled such a distance,
never had four gone at once.
"It will be a real drain on our bodily
systems," Terry said, "and if not for the capsules Sid has developed,
would cause severe headaches, disorientation, and nausea." He
He looked around the room. "This is all very experimental yet.
Never forget that. No one has ever done this." His eyes centered in on
Cort. "Rachel proved that it could be done where not much over a century
was involved. But this is still...different, dangerous. Stay alert every
moment. We should be able to get in and
out in less than a day."
The arrival had been set for the tunnel that Maximus
must pass through during his escape attempt. They would let him get his armor
on, then wait for him before he emerged beside the walls where the trap had
been set for him using
"That's our moment," Terry stated. "The
best time for us to get in and out without being seen, without having to
interact with anybody else." He
looked at them one by one, slowly.
"All the preparations, all the training, is for the possibility
that this," he paused, licking his lip, "might not happen."
Rachel lay in Cort's arms, sleeping after their
lovemaking. He stroked her hair and watched the moon sail slowly through the
clouds, his mind too full for sleep. Maximus. Tomorrow. The two of them had the
same "source." Yes, all of them did, of course, but somehow he
"knew" Maximus. Something in him ached with wanting to help the man.
Sid looked at the capsules. Three in one hand, one in
the other. It wouldn't kill the little
priest. Only make him miserable for a while. He...irritated...Sid. Not only had
he turned Rachel into a blob of vanilla pudding, he was disgustingly...good. No
one, especially not Alicia, would ever know that a bit of Sweet 'n Low had
replaced the complex white powder within the capsule.
When the four of them came in, standing in front of
him, Sid looked them up and down critically. Lowering his lids to half mast, he
purred, "Why, Rachel, I do believe you've missed your calling as a washer
woman." The women were dressed in simple homespun garments of brown and
tan. Absolutely nondescript. That was
the point. Not to attract attention. Diedre's hair, in one long, thick braid,
had been wrapped around her head and a brown scarf placed atop it.
Cort was garbed as a foot soldier and Terry a junior
officer. "You have it?" Sid asked Terry, not explaining what he meant
to the others.
"I do," Terry replied.
"Good. See
that you don't get yourself...or them...in a position where you would need
it."
Rachel narrowed her eyes. What WERE they talking about?
Sid smiled. "Don't forget breakfast," he
chirped, handing each of them a capsule.
"Expensive little things," he added, "so don't drop
them." Indeed. Several hundred thousand dollars had been
spent on their development.
Having swallowed the capsules, the four team members
entered the chamber. As the heavy door
slowly closed, Sid waved. "Ta ta,
don't do anything I wouldn't do."
Terry shook his head silently then drew in a long,
deep breath. He took hold of Diedre's hand, pulling her arm up and through his.
Cort had his arm around Rachel's shoulders. Terry smiled slightly. "It
should be all right. Don't worry. The capsules will counteract the effects of
the extended warp. We'll be fine."
Cort had no memory of going through the warp after
Redemption. He wished
"Not really," she replied. "It always
seems longer while it's happening, though.
Everything sort of goes into slow motion. Don't worry. It'll be over before you know it."
A slow glow started to spread through the chamber,
growing brighter and brighter and beginning to pulse. Rachel sighed in relief.
The capsules were doing their job. Other than a steady tingling in her nerve
endings, she felt fine. She turned to look up at Cort. "See,"
His face was white, his jaw clamped tight, his eyes
closed. He had his free hand clutched to his forehead, his fingertips digging
into his skin. "WHAT?" she cried.
"Cort! What's the matter?"
He couldn't answer. His head was about to explode.
Everything in his belly was about to come up his throat. When he started to
sink to his knees, Terry grabbed him, his eyes meeting Rachel's panicked
ones.
"The capsule!" Rachel shouted over the roar.
"Why isn't his capsule working?"
The expression she saw forming on Terry's face gave her the answer. Sid!
"He...he WOULDN'T!!!" she cried. 
Cort was crumpling to the floor despite Terry's best
efforts to hold onto him. He pulled his knees up as far as he could and had
both arms wrapped around his head. Rachel knelt beside him, gripping his
shoulder as he moaned, "Oh, God...oh, God...oh, God...," over and
over.
"Help me hold him," Terry shouted to both
Rachel and Diedre. "It'll be over soon!"
But it wasn't. Something...shifted. The tone of the
loud hum changed. Terry looked up,
startled. Something was going wrong. The air about them started to vibrate,
grow warm, and a deep amber glow surrounded each of their forms. Terry tried to
call something out to them, but his words were too...thick...or was it the air?
He moved his arm toward Diedre and the motion of it left a trail in its
passage.
Then there was a sudden shrill whine, a sharp jerk,
and the colors in the air about them literally shattered, dropping down as
shards of broken light. Everything was very quiet for a moment except for
Cort's continued moaning. Very quiet. A layer of cold fog about them began to
billow slowly away and Terry could make out slender, straight
A flaming firepot smashed into a tall pine not far
away. Screams filled the air. "My
GOD!" Terry cried. "
"What do you MEAN they're GONE?!?" Sid
shouted, gripping the tech by his
^ * ^ * ^ * ^
“No, no! It’s
starts like this: ‘in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit…’” Rachel
recited. The tiniest grin flashed across
Cort’s face before persisting.
“A hole in the ground saves nine…isn’t that something
called ‘golf’?” he rumbled, feigning confusion.
“Am trying the best I can, my love,” he protested when she threw him a
look, trying to land a kiss on her cheek as she passed him to retrieve the
salad from the refrigerator. “ I need
time to absorb it all. Munchkins with
knives…”
“Hobbits!”
Rachel huffed, rolling her eyes. They
had finished watching the first installment of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, and
were taking a break, since she had tried to explain to him that all three were
like the books: best appreciated as a back to back experience. Despite her best attempts to let the movie
speak for itself, Cort’s questions soon encouraged her ever-present enthusiasm
for an author that had so affected her childhood. She didn’t realize just how amused he was by
this until he playfully remarked on various scenes.
“S’what I said.
Little people running around with a ring that makes you disappear! I know a few gunmen who’d pay their eye-teeth
to get their hands on it…and a fairy…’
“An ELF,” Rachel growled, thwapping him lightly on the
shoulder. He was being willfully obtuse.
“And that girl with the sword,” he went on, shaking
his head in bafflement. “Never heard of
such a thing. Who ever heard of a lady
who rode a horse that way and used a sword?”
He cast a sidelong look at her.
“You wouldn’t happen…to know how to ride a horse like that…now would
you, Rachel?”
“You are the most aggravating, obstinate, infuriating….”
she cried, taking him by the shoulders and giving him a slight shake (as much
as she could with his solid, tall figure…OOooo…why was she mad at him,
now?) Rachel was beginning to see she
would have to give up on trying to make him serious this evening. His green eyes were snapping with mischief
and the sly smile she loved so much was making its appearance so frequently,
she didn’t know if she should encourage it or not. He was just having fun with
her, but Rachel had been a little nervous he would have the same reaction to
this set of movies as he had with Bud’s; although, she told herself, she didn’t
know why she should be. The Wizard of Oz
had been his first foray into how fantasy was portrayed by film-makers and Cort
had been thoroughly entertained, delighted now that some of the references he
had heard from others about NanoCorp made sense, became a compass for him to
follow. The Star Wars trilogy had been
the same way, Jedi knights not withstanding.
Unfortunately, that was when he discovered he could
needle her about some of her weaker moments when Han Solo was on the
screen. It was looking like the Rings
trilogy was going to be the same, especially after she had told him about her
favorite book character, Peregrin Took.
As if to repent (just a tad) for his teasing, he
wrapped her up in a hug, kissing her soundly.
“Say it,” he demanded when he released her, smiling
into her eyes knowingly. “Say you love
me.”
“I can’t think right now…” Rachel mumbled, which was
true. His kisses never failed to reduce
her to pure brainless mush.
“I won’t kiss you again until you do,” he threatened.
“I love you!”
“I know,” he grinned and released her with a loud
smack on the lips.
“Say you love me,” he whispered again, a time
later. The house was dark. They had opened the windows to take advantage
of a cool crisp breeze, and now they could hear the rush of air through the
pines, a mockingbird twittering its final declaration of territory before the
last rays of the sun slipped away. The
Two Towers disc still whirred in its slot in the player, and Cort’s playfulness
had dampened somewhat, either because he was tired, or because the fine wheels
in his mind were turning again in conjunction with the beat of his heart.
Then, he had asked her about words that she had long
forgotten, words that, until Arwen moved across the screen, and the sorrowful
images of prophecy by her father echoed in the room, had been safe in mental
storage. She found him looking at her
with a strange expression after that scene, emotional enough to tell her he was
struck by those words. She would only
allow his long fingers to caress her face and play with her hair until the
movie was over. Then, he began asking
her about that day, when she watched over him, cried over him, poured out what
he had meant to her. He astounded her as
well: told her of what he remembered, the doorway and hill, the fog he traveled
when he seemed so far gone. The evening,
which was supposed to finish with Return of the King, and any questions he
might have had, became a long conversation of their souls well into the quiet
evening.
“I love you,
And somehow this morphed into a tentative philosophy
about their impending journey. Rachel
found herself replaying a scene of not too many days ago, an unexpected look into
a part of Cort she knew was there, but somehow always remained in the shadows
of his thoughts. She saw Cort in
contemplation of Maximus as he used a sharp stone to erase his very identity,
his absolute soul, silent tears running down his cheek as he watched.
Rachel wasn’t sure what affected her more: the sight
of his tears, or the pall of what was to come.
She was glad Cort was coming along.
It seemed right that he would, but she’d had anxiety about how they
would find a way to comfort Maximus once he was brought. She knew she was starting to think too much
when the threads of her thoughts started tangling with memories of Cort’s
journey.
But the monkey brain wouldn’t stop chattering. She shifted to discover that Cort was dozing,
so Rachel decided to just let her mind run with the flow of thought.
For Cort, it had been the collar, thrown down in the
dust by someone else. Not him. He wasn’t the one who rejected it. But Herod had a point to make and could only
do it by taking away the one thing that Cort had claimed for himself, on his
own, without the manipulation of another agenda. All that he had become, his repentance, his
blackened sorrow in the face of murder, his choice to turn and submit to the
One who could annihilate him with a mere thought, and his subsequent walk
through the desert back to God: all that symbolized in that dust-stained
collar, torn away by another hand and defiled in the street. Or so Herod and the townspeople had thought.
For Maximus, it was his honor, his essence as a soldier,
a defender of
Rachel stared up into the dark, beginning to see a
light bloom in front of her. That’s why
Cort is so moved to watch Gladiator over and over again: like Herod bearing
down on Cort, the Roman emperor became accuser to Maximus when he refused to
kill his defeated opponent.
Why don’t you just...die?
In the still darkness of the room, Rachel could hear
the words as if from someone else: maybe the struggle of the arena showed Cort
that there is hope. He doesn’t have to
accept the accusation, the collar in the dirt, any more than Maximus had
accepted the stain of entertainment at the expense of another.
There is still hope, Arwen murmured against the damning
words of Elrond.
“You are worth something,” she whispered to the soul
in her arms, even though she knew he wouldn’t hear. “To me and to God.”
The little red light on her answering machine blinked
so many times, counting the number of saved calls that Deidre was sure the
electronics were about to short out. But
at this particular moment, the last thing she felt like doing these last few
weeks was chatting it up with everyone who assumed she had nothing better to
do.
Which comes from spreading the word to friends and
folk back home of her specific whereabouts, she thought with some degree of
rue. But then again, things had happened
so fast since…since meeting Terry, and so happily at that, she couldn’t help
the desire to let everyone know. That
had been the night she signed the papers with NanoCorp, the papers with the
apartment. But since that night, she had
scarcely enough time to really settle in and give a report to those who
returned her calls. And now the
responses to that slew of good news spread all over the telephone network were
blaring away on her machine. And the
ones she did reach (not many, as the irony of her network was they were all off
running around…unavailable…themselves) had to be happy with her vague
description of a research assistant for foreign contracts.
“That was hard to say with a straight face,” Deidre
explained to Terry as they both laid out the items they were collecting for
their foray into ancient
“Be firm, Nolia,” he said. “The simpler the better. And when we return, you can go into some more
detail if you like. But for now, it’s
best if you just say that you are trying to settle in.”
“You’ve no idea how often I’ve said that. See how many times it blinks? I’ve been getting grief anyway,” Deidre said,
pointing to the answering machine. Terry
just looked at her with a small grin.
Beep! “
Beep! “Deidre, honey, this is your Aunt Genevieve…honey,
I’m a bit confused now…didn’t you just take a job in
“Called her back,” Deidre told Terry, punching pause.
“And?”
Deidre started to answer two or three times before
giving up and hitting play again.
Beep! “Hey, Dee… it’s Charles…your erstwhile digging
pardner? The one you were supposed to
help plot test pits with last week? Call
me.”
Beep! “Deeder, this is Wilder. Baby sister, give your poor ol’ brother a
call. Harkin told me to harass you while
he was in
“See what I mean?”
She groaned as Terry chuckled.
“One more day, two more nights,” Terry murmured as
they later sat on the patio of the apartment and watched the sun go down. What he and Deidre had not put together this
evening, Cort, Rachel, and Bud were assembling in the fourth floor conference
room.
“One more day of rabbit food and training? Glory halleluiah,” she replied. They were both stretched out in lounge
chairs, sated by a small dinner he had prepared for her.
“Only if there’s something you need to go over once
more,” Terry replied, almost dreamily.
The beer he was drinking was disconnecting him, or so it seemed as
Deidre. She turned on her side in the
lounger and propped her head to look at him.
“That’s all it’ll be about tomorrow.
And pizza at my place,” he added with a small laugh.
“You’re going to have to spend some time telling me
more of yourself,” she said. Rachel had
invited her over to watch Proof of Life and it had taken a few days for her to
process her own reaction to it, ultimately realizing she only wanted to know
Terry better. When she told him this, he
seemed both relieved and hesitant. There
were a lot of precarious emotions to work out amid the rigors of training and
the chance to discuss in depth why they were feeling the way they were had been
rare.
Terry turned to look at her with a smile. “I know it, luv. Mind’s not exactly in a place to share right
now, though,” he added, apologetically.
He reached to brush her cheek with the backs of his fingers. As if realizing how dismissive that statement
was, he turned somewhat himself to face her.
“I plan to spend as much time as I can get away with once we get through
this. With the team of us, it shouldn’t
take us much…and then…” he trailed off.
“I don’t want you to think I’m trying to rush you,”
Deidre added hastily, feeling as if she had stepped willfully into a mine field
he had warned her not to. “I don’t want
to rush you. I just…I like you.” She pressed her lips together, unable to form
the words without sounding desperate or grasping, which always seemed to be the
way whenever she found a man she had hopes for.
“I guess I’m insecure,” she ended, a slight note of misery creeping into
her voice. Damn, she hated it when she
sounded like this!
She didn’t dare look at him for several minutes,
certain that if she did, he would have words ready to lay down in front of
her. Words of rebuttal, of rebuff.
The hand brushed her cheek again and then lifted her
chin to meet his gaze.
“If it’s any comfort, I’m a bit scared too, even if
you have…heard the full tale,” Terry said.
He let out a long breath, as if he had been holding it in. “In fact, now that you have, I feel I can…that
is, talk more with you. But I’ve got so
much on my mind, I can’t think straight.
Be patient with me,” he asked, wistful.
Nodding her assent, Deidre put took his palm and
placed it on her cheek, smiling. “Of
course,” she promised.
They watched the last of the sun disappear behind the
line of trees in the distance, the fresh skin of a companionable silence ruling
their time; and after Terry helped clean up from dinner, picked up their items
to take back to Emerald City and said his goodnight to her. But before he opened the door to leave, he
set everything down and pulled her to him in an impulsive embrace, kissing her
hard and long. That put a smile on both
their faces, and so the night came and went with a much more restful sleep than
Deidre had anticipated.
True to his word, Terry released them from their
routine, suggesting they cut loose instead of dwelling on what was to
come. She and Rachel and Cort
immediately disobeyed. Well, Cort did,
at any rate, by taking up his established workout. She and Rachel wandered all over town,
gossiping like old school mates, like long lost friends catching up, putting
serious dents on their credit card bills with purchases, eating whenever the
whim struck them.
The two girls had been a bit wary of each other at
first, even after their friendly introduction.
Rachel was much more deliberate than Deidre, cautious, which Deidre
supposed was a quality Cort liked about her; and a bit on the dreamy side,
which Deidre couldn’t decide if she liked or not. As if Rachel were not always in the same zone
of reality as everyone else. When she
got tired of trying to figure out that personality trait, Deidre decided it was
because of Cort.
And whew! The
relationship between those two was quite obvious, even before Rachel told her
the full measure of her last assignment, which bordered on the operatic. If she hadn’t met Cort and Terry and Bud and
Sid and learned of the nanotechnology involved, she would have dismissed it as
such. But one didn’t even need that to
see it in their faces. Deidre was no
psychic, but even she could feel the air go electric when Cort and Rachel were
together. She often found herself
wishing it were the same with her and Terry.
She really missed that kind of connection.
Still, Rachel and Cort seemed to have some kind of
positive effect on Terry, because he laughed and joked more when they were
around, seemed more inclined to affection, which Deidre tried not to analyze
too much, because she loved seeing Terry laugh.
Treasured the small touches he couldn’t resist.
When she indicated as much to Rachel, the younger
girl’s face lit up as well.
“Oh Deidre, you’ve no idea the change you brought in
him. I’ve never seen him so…unchained!”
she laughed.
“How can you be so sure its me that did this to
him?” Deidre asked, ever the cynic, but
pleased far more than she was willing to admit.
“Cause he was a…no, not that bad,” Rachel said,
revising her description mid-sentence.
“He always seemed so utterly unreachable to me, even though we do get
along,” she explained. “He’s not a hard
boss to work for. Just…unreadable
sometimes. But I trust him far more than
Sid. Far more,” she finished with a
shudder. Deidre did the same. She had finally met the infamous Wizard. Nowhere near as goofy as the one in the
movie. Downright frightening, in fact.
They were back at the
“So he’s seen Raiders, then?” Deidre asked after they
had watched for several minutes. Rachel
had made her laugh so hard with some of the comments Cort had made about the
various films she showed him. Maybe this
excursion won’t be as bad as all that, she thought.
Rachel nodded.
“He was so caught up in it, I didn’t have the heart to
tell him how I used to….well,” Rachel trailed off, grinning with some
embarrassment at Deidre, who grinned back because she knew what Rachel was
reminiscing: a dashing Harrison Ford with a lopsided grin and a rakish
attitude.
They watched Cort snap down several more targets,
moving methodically down the row of various objects, high and low, far and
near, stepping with the ease of a cat stalking its prey.
“Too bad he can’t wear a fedora in
“Yeah. Too
bad,” Rachel agreed, eyes tracking Cort with every step.
They both sighed.