Training
Karick and Swindon-Smythe sat in the small office and waited for their boss to arrive. As the newest employees of the Cyaxares corporation they were unsure of what their jobs would entail. Both put their coffee cups down as they heard the outside door of the suite open, and stood when Alan and Mr. Wilkins entered. Alan gestured for them to sit, and they did.
Karick figured his job would be primarily concerned with security; he was, after all, a former intelligence agent. Swindon-Smythe was less sure. The last month had been rough on him, mostly imprisoned in the secure office two doors down from Wilkins's own space. The new office was just a few floors down from his former jail, in the same building in midtown Manhattan, almost all the way east, near the United Nations. Three or four evenings a week, as his end of the semester schedule allowed, Alan had come to question him, and though he did not want to betray any of the secrets of his former employer, Lord Thornbow, all of the confidences came pouring out of him in a torrent of candor; he knew why he was unable to hold back, and it softened the blow.
Karick had approached Alan, at home in Westchester, two days after Christmas. He had watched Mr. and Mrs. Marshall leave the house, all dressed up for a night out, and then knocked on the door. Alan had answered, and they stared at each other for more than a few seconds, and something weird happened inside Karick's mind, something he didn't quite understand even now, two weeks later. All of the details of his operation against the boy came spilling out of him as they sat in the den of the Marshall house. In the end Karick was worried that Alan was going to have him eliminated, but these fears turned out to be groundless; instead an offer of employment was proffered and promptly accepted. Alan gave him two weeks of leave to gather up his wife and daughter, and with the new identities provided by Mr. Wilkins, relocate them out of harm's way; as Karick sat in his new office across a table from his boss and his boss's lawyer the tan he had acquired in Australia, where he got his family settled, was only just starting to fade. He felt fit and alive, a stark change from the past year which had mostly been spend sitting in cars and offices on stake-outs, first watching Jean-Pierre Massimo, and then Alan.
Alan had breezed through his exams and papers; his power allowed inhuman bouts of concentration coupled with the ability to eschew sleep as was his will. He spent a minimum of two hours of each day honing his mental abilities, and slept only every other day for three hours, with short naps after exercising his mind powers. He began with a process he called memory mining, for lack of a better term. Until then he had mostly limited himself to using the powers of Paishiya'uvada to compel people to do his biding; he got information from his subject by compelling them to speak to him truthfully. Now, with barely an effort after hours of tiring practice he could actually dig into people's minds, finding all he needed within them, and without their needing to be questioned. All of his other free hours had been dedicated to plowing through Massimo's notes. He also practiced planting false memories into others, but for some reason found that more difficult.
When Karick had returned from Down Under two evenings earlier Alan had spent a good deal of time inside his head with his new skill; Swindon-Smythe had been "mined" previously, and what he had learned from him, coupled with what had come out in the interrogation sessions had at once chilled him and reassured him. Thornbow, though very knowledgeable about the Seeds of Paishiya'uvada and the Orbis Tertius, possessed far far less than what was contained in Massimo's files.
The meeting went quickly; Karick indeed was put in charge of security, primarily Alan's personal security, and Swindon-Smythe was assigned the task of retrieving the rest of Jean-Pierre's research, scattered as it were across the globe in four locations. Alan left the details to be spelled out by Wilkins, who in addition to his lawyerly duties was now the CEO of Cyaxares LLC, ostensibly an international consulting company dealing in all things concerning archeology; Alan was the president of the company, but the lawyer was going to do most of the work.
The company did in fact have a number of fairly lucrative contracts with various Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries, most prominently with the government of Israel, and had a staff of fifty or so antiquarians and researchers, based out of an office in Rome, though they spent most of their time in the field. The head of operations, a former university professor named Bernard Lawson, had flown in the week before to meet Alan and Wilkins to update them on the current status of the company's projects and contracts. Alan had been impressed with the man's erudition and management skills; Lawson agreed to the contract extension he and Wilkins offered him.
Karick began assembling a team to keep Alan from being kidnapped again, and another to begin surveillance on Thornbow. Alan had insisted, and Karick had agreed (though it made the task more difficult) that Alan's security be as unobtrusive as possible. He wanted guards, he just didn't want to see them. He also agreed to have a miniscule transponder implanted subdermally, so that if he ever was taken again the security would be able to track him electronically, and he had a panic button installed on his cell phone.
By the end of the week Swindon-Smythe was ready to leave. His appearance was altered by Alan. Formerly he was a slight man of average height, dark brown hair and brown eyes. Now he stood six feet even, light blue eyes, light brown hair, and a broad beefy frame. Wilkins arranged for papers in his new name, Harry Medford; his flight to Lisbon left Saturday morning. A town car picked him up from his corporate apartment. Alan expected him back in a month, for after Portugal he was headed to Damascus, then to Singapore, and finally to San Francisco; in each city the arrangements would take a week or longer to deal with; his orders were to contract with bonded couriers to fly from New York and meet him in each city once he had retrieved his bundle, and customs officials had to be bribed. * * *
Kate was looking forward to going back to school. It wasn't that she disliked being home, but the freedom of college living agreed with her. It was somewhat startling that first night home when her parents asked her where she was going as she was preparing to leave after dinner. She was just so used to coming and going as she pleased without informing them; she didn't resent it, and in fact her relationship with her folks had never been better, a combination of the two of them seeing her as an adult now that she was an undergraduate, and Kate's own regimen of self-improvement. She kept up with her volunteer work, and was in general far more nice to people then she was before, less inclined to judge people by their social standing and popularity.
This "new" Kate was working for her, and she had far more friends then she used to have, and the quality of her friendships was much better than in the past. Take Scarlet, example; the "old" Kate would have barely tolerated her as a roommate, to say nothing of a friend. OK, she was a nice enough person to be sure, but she didn't dress as fashionably as girls she used to pick as friends--she wasn't as cool.
But she liked her. A lot. Maybe too much. Especially since Scarlet's revelation that she was bisexual and confining her partners to other women for the duration of her college years.
The dreams were getting to her. Every so often Kate had wildly erotic dreams about being with other women sexually. The first was the night after Scarlet told her that she was a Lesbian Until Graduation. So potent were these dreams that whenever she had them she awoke to drenched bedclothes and sheets. Each time she was jerked out of her slumber by these powerful fantasies she had to masturbate, further wetting herself with vaginal secretions. She had asked Scarlet what she should get her for Christmas, and her roommate had asked her to consider girl-girl sex. They laughed, Kate nervously, Scarlet jokingly, but Kate was indeed considering it. She had, since last March, always used Alan as her jerk off fantasy, but more and more the thoughts of sex between her and Scarlet, or her and other attractive girls she knew, were intruding . Sometimes they even popped into her mind when she was having sex with Alan, especially when he went down on her.
Now, with just three days remaining before the dorms reopened on Monday, she was almost going out of her mind with anxiety. It was becoming harder and harder for to deny the fact that she was attracted to girls, and the conflict brewing within her soul was almost sickening. It was early evening, and she was waiting to hear from Alan. His parents were leaving for a long weekend in Caribbean and she was going to drive over after they left for the airport.
"You're biting your nails again, sis," Pauline called over from the other side of the Van Devanter's living room. "Anything the matter?" her sister asked, putting down the paper.
Kate ceased and desisted from chewing a cuticle, and look over at Pauline. She was dressed up for a date with her new boyfriend, Brian Lacy, waiting for him to pick her up.
"Nah, s'nuthin. I'm OK."
"Good," her sister responded, punctuating this with a warm smile.
"Thanks for asking. So how are things with you and Brian going?"
"Really good. He's such a gentleman, maybe too much of a gentleman."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, you know. He's very nervous around me, around girls in general. He might be a really handsome guy, and a jock n'all, but he could barely work up the nerve to hold my hand at the movie on our first date. I'm loosening him up though," she added with a giggle.
Kate giggled too. "How loose?"
"Well," Pauline laughed, "last week at the movies he managed to put his arm around me, but he did recoil when I put his hand on my boob."
"Maybe he's gay," Kate joked.
"No, I'm pretty sure he's not. After awhile he did put his hand back, plus he's a real good kisser. It's kind of a nice change, you know, being the assertive one, you know after Alan. God, Alan was so commanding. I gave him my virginity before I even knew what was hap--"
"You what!" Kate shrieked bemusedly, knowing that Alan had fucked her.
"Oops! Little too much information there, huh, sis? Oh well, wasn't a secret or anything, just don't tell mom or dad."
