The Path Changes the Traveler

*****

I've got a bunch more to put up for this, but every one takes forEVer to post, given the crappy internet connection that I've got.

This is where I trot out the main protagonist for much of this: "Captain" Morgan Brock, former Major, U.S.Army.

Former ranchhand.

Former crop-duster pilot.

Former sort of bush pilot.

Former airline re-positioning pilot.

Presently a very confused field operative.

This is a work of fiction, though I do use the war in Southeast Asia long ago as a bit of a backdrop for this one chapter. The transfer of his workplace probably couldn't ever have happened in reality, but hey ...

Fiction, remember?

0_o

*****

1972 Taiwan

Morgan awoke in darkness feeling a slight need to urinate, though it wasn't urgent or anything. He wondered about it, but only briefly. The center of his attention shifted to the other thing after a moment.

However much there was in his bladder, he guessed that it and maybe the way that he'd been lying here asleep must have been enough and now, besides an odd feeling as though there was a headache receding in his skull and the way that his mouth tasted like a dried out old cesspool, there was this other thing.

He had a fat, mildly throbbing semi-erection.

The shifting of his thoughts to that only caused the rest of the trigger process and several seconds later, there was another thing requiring his attention. He didn't mind it all that much, but the facts were that you can't do two things at once, can you?

Morgan groaned softly, though he hadn't meant to. He was stuck now, mired in that slightly male thing of wanting what you can't have at the moment.

All of this deep thinking just brought the need to pee out front now.

He moved his hand, guessing in his semi-awakened state that with a little luck, he could deal with the boner and then get up to pee. But as his fingers curled around his shaft, he became aware of the way that it felt in his hand.

There was a way that his skin there felt after he'd had a shower.

This wasn't that feeling.

This was the warm, heavy, and very, very slightly damp way that it felt to him if he'd been busting his ass working hard and been sweating his balls off doing something and then gone to sleep without a bath or a shower for some reason. It was more a difference in texture than of actually being damp.

This felt as though he'd been in the bush for about three days.

He almost groaned again, amazed at the crap that he could think of and ponder while only half-awake.

Though it felt good in that familiar old way as he stroked it a little, his mind wouldn't let it go.

How had he gone to bed sweaty? He didn't remember doing anything like what he'd have had to do to have the skin there feel this way to him.

He remembered getting up the day before and going for his run on the roads around the base where he was to transition through. Ten miles the easy way and no fucking around with gear. Just his T-shirt, shorts and runners on his feet, a regular Joe out on civvy street. After that, it had been only some familiarisation classes with new vehicle types.

He'd had a shower after the run, and he could remember having one before bed because those classes had been out in a couple of hangars and this was fucking Alabama after all.

Then why?

His thoughts went back to the debrief session on his way back from Laos. His handler Schuyler had let him know that there was a 'fiscal restructuring' on the way down. Morgan had lived through a couple before. The aftermath always left more empty office space and less of the old familiar faces around.

"We'll talk about it when you're a little closer in on your way back," Schuyler had said, "From here, it looks like I'll about be one of the few left anywhere and I can't even say that with any certainty."

Morgan hadn't liked the sound of that at all. It was always cutbacks which he heard about on the wind. He thought that maybe he should have listened to his mother and just stayed in Wyoming to run the family business way back when. Why if he had, he'd be fat and probably at least a little well-off by now.

Well, or dead, or maybe full of cancer from the things that he'd had to fly around back then.

But he'd said no thanks and now Mom was living it up in Florida after helping his kid brother to finance the takeover of the business which had kept them all fed until he'd gone off to serve his country.

He tried to toss all of his considerations aside and just work what he had in his hand.

But the thought kept coming back.

And he still needed to pee.

Fuck.

He gave it up, knowing now that he'd get up, have the struggle over commanding his thoughts as he stood over the toilet bowl until - at bloody last - he'd be able to pee.

After that, if it was still that important, he guessed, ... well then he'd deal with the erection which by then would have abated at least enough to urinate.

He thought about biology for a moment as he began to roll over to stretch for the light on the nightstand in his quarters. Why did males have to double up on these functions? Why couldn't they have a place to pee out of and a different one for R&R?

He had a thought then wondering if women could just stop in middle of, ... and then ...

He didn't really want to go down that road of thought, because if they could do that, he'd feel a little jealous, because that would be convenient, wouldn't it?

He remembered asking a girlfriend about it one time long ago. She'd answered sensibly by asking him in return if he was aware that he was given to having idiotic thoughts now and then.

He stretched a little farther, thinking that his hand was missing the lamp switch and if he could just stretch a little, ...

The floor was a lot harder than he thought that it might be.

It was also a lot colder than he thought that it ought to be as well.

His cheek stung a bit, and a few other bits of him were complaining over the rude awakening, but on the whole, he hadn't broken his nose and his tackle seemed to have avoided the impact as well, though one of his knees and both of his elbows chimed in with their damage reports.

So what the fuck was going on here?

Morgan raised his head and looked around. The room was black, though there was that dim little blinking thing way the hell over there someplace. He'd have gotten to his feet to walk over, but he knew there was something very wrong now. The floor of his temporary quarters was linoleum tile.

What was under his hands and knees felt more like terrazzo marble or maybe finished concrete or something. If he was someplace other than where he thought that he was, then his recollection of the layout of his room would be wrong as well.

He was about to just crawl toward the blinking light when the overhead lights came on, glaring harshly as though they were themselves intent on eradicating any sort of shadow. Morgan got to his feet slowly and looked around.

This wasn't the room where he'd gone to sleep.

He didn't say 'What the Fuck', out loud, though it was on his lips.

Where he was looked rather like a prison; all cinder-block walls painted in a hideous shade of green. The blinking light was on a telephone - a strange old-fashioned kind that Morgan was certain must have escaped the notice of any decent phone system technician to even still be in service. He'd never seen a phone like it anywhere - in North America.

He walked over and lifted the receiver. He heard nothing other than the soft static which told him that this was a live line.

"Hello?"

He heard the voice of Bobby Schuyler at the other end. "Morg? Hey, sorry about the rude awakening, but things have changed. You need to get dressed and head out the door to meet your new boss."

Morgan shook his head, trying to clear it. "Bobby? What the hell is this? Where am I? How did I get here and - "

"Just listen," his superior said," and I'll give you a little background. You were on the list for forced retirement, though you're far too young. They don't give a shit about much when they decide these things. I fought tooth and nail to keep you but there was nothing I could do.

I did work something though," the voice went on as Morgan was reaching for his pants which he saw over the back of a chair and wondering about that now, since that wasn't where he remembered laying them," I'm going to loan you out for a time, then when things settle down, I'll reel you right back in.

For now though, it's gonna have to look as though you're MIA for a little while. That way, you're still on the books, you're just missing. As soon as I can, I'll sort of 'find' you and bring you back. In the meantime, your pay accumulates, since your whereabouts are not known.

That's why you're where you are for now. I had to rig up a bit of a snatch job on one of my own agents. I'm farming you out to a private concern. They'll have work for you, I've been told, so it shouldn't get too boring.

You uh, ... you ought to get dressed since you're probably standing there in your skivvies. First impressions still count for a lot, even in our line of work; your exemplary record notwithstanding. So when you're ready, just head on out the door and turn left. You can't miss the place. I'll be in touch soon."

"Bobby?" Morgan called into the phone, "Bobby? It sounds to me like you're breaking a lot federal laws here. You can't just sell off a federal intelligence operati -

Bobby? Hello?"

The static was gone from the line and Morgan knew that the call had been dropped. He looked around the room in confusion and a little disgust. It wasn't the room, it was that he'd been abducted and brought here somehow - and he hadn't known a thing about it. The vague headache made a lot of sense now and if he'd had the luxury of a full-length mirror and a little time, he'd have tried to find the place on him where the injection had been administered.

That injection of likely a strong sedative would have been the second step. The first would have been the ether - and that was what had given him the sewer mouth.

He found his clothes and pulled them on, all thoughts of a good night's sleep long gone now.

He kept thinking that somehow and somewhere, old Bobby Schuyler had sold him down the river.

All those years, he told himself. The Army and then Ranger School; the long and arduous Long Range Recon Patrol training to prepare him and others for insertion just about anywhere in the world. Well that had been a little fun for him in a sense for the challenges. It had taken him in rank from a butter-bar second Lieutenant to his rank of Captain - not a big step to be sure, and though he'd hated it at first, he had begun to get used to the jokes about 'Captain Morgan' after a little time.

Maybe it had been his background and having grown up self-reliant out in Wyoming or something, but he'd taken to that like a duck to water and at some point, he guessed, it must have been noticed that he'd been the one with at least an idea to build a plan out of more often than not.

The next thing that he'd known, he was talking to a few of the sort of officer which was seldom seen by anyone, and if and when they were, everybody just rolled their eyes and made a comment about the spooks and super-spies. Morgan hadn't cared much one way or the other until it had become clear that these guys had come all of the way from someplace just to see and recruit him. That had been the surprise.

The next thing that Morgan had known - pretty much - was that he was then a spook himself. He'd wondered after a while if these folks paid people to go in after the fact and THEN read up on an agent's resume, because that's when the questions had begun about his flying.

"Well yeah," he'd nodded during the interview, some six months after he'd already been hired by the agency, "It started out as a little business that my Dad and Mom put together. It was all crop-dusting back then and well, you have to understand that Wyoming is not very flat and dusting is very seat of the pants work. You don't pay attention for just a second and you're not gonna be cashing the check.

When I got my ticket, a lot of the business was about transport well as dusting; so I've got multi-engine ratings and night flying and sometimes I'd have to fly an old airliner from point A to Point B to help them get re-positioned.

Like if a plane developed engine trouble and had to divert and set down," he said, "The crew and the passengers would catch another flight and away they'd go.

But after the engines had been repaired, well that plane could be a thousand miles from where the airline's roster needed it to be. We'd go and get that plane and fly it.

That's about it, but for the bush flying. We'd fly hunters or fishermen into some pretty remote places and then come back to get them a week or two later. That's almost a whole 'nother kind of aviation all by itself."

He'd been enjoying the relative luxury of being able to grow his hair a little once more back then. The agency didn't want all of their people looking as though they'd just gotten in off the front lines, so as long as you didn't let it get too long you were ok. He remembered running his hand over his hair during the interview.

At the time, he'd been remembering a little advice that he'd gotten from an old soldier back when he'd been in Officer Candidate School and the words rang in his head as he found himself sitting across a large table from several men.

"Just a thought about volunteering," the man had said, "Don't.

I'm telling you now that if somebody asks you if you can play the piano and you say yes, then as sure as I'm sitting here, you'll find yourself having to move one."

The words had stayed with Morgan, but this wasn't the Army, so he wasn't sure what to offer.

They asked him for a list of the types which he'd flown and it was a slightly long one. "I've got some time in the smaller types; Piper and Cessna stuff, but I've got to say that the fattest part as far as my hours go would be in the big radial reciprocating types; the old Convairs and Douglasses and like that.

Got a little time in turboprops, but they're very type-specific and less general."

The whole scenario was repeated a month or so later because - he guessed - that somebody had learned that he was a good marksman and it was a talent that he hadn't learned in the army. So back to an office somewhere for another interview. They wanted to know how he'd learned.

Morgan had almost laughed.

"I used to go gopher hunting for a few cattlemen. Gopher holes in a mountain pasture cause losses due to broken legs and stuff. A fat and heavy steer goes down and it's not long at all before the natural predators in the area take notice and you're out a ton of saleable meat. That's a dead loss.

So I'd go and sit up on a hillside for a while with a pair of binoculars and a match-grade rifle. You got to pick off gophers from a long way off, since they're so cautious back home. My rifle was chambered for .223 Remington - the same round that goes into an M-16. Most folks don't know that it was originally developed as a varmint round and not for people."

That led to a trip out to a range and an afternoon with a USMC sniper rifle. The thing was really a very slightly modified target rifle anyway, so it was a little fun for Morgan shooting at targets out a thousand yards and that was the end of it.

The men had all nodded a little sagely and that had been about it. But at about the time when Morgan had been expecting to start with basic intelligence work for the agency, he'd found that there were times when he'd been drafted to be a pilot and he was advised to use the ranges often to stay sharp.

As well, since he stood out like a sore thumb in terms of being forgettable - given that he was a little tall and muscular, the kind of intelligence work where he was placed tended to be where they needed a man with a gun. Again, he hadn't minded at the time, but it sure was a long way from the work that he thought that he'd be getting as assignments.

Now he wondered about everything. He had a feeling that walking out that door to turn left would take him into just one big fat unknown.

Morgan sighed to himself.

He'd rather be in the mountains and woodlands of Wyoming, headed for a trout stream that he knew.

So Morgan found himself wandering down a very long and almost featureless corridor and it led him finally to one door - right at the end, after passing what seemed like countless other doors, all of them as featureless as the hallway. But he knew it when he got to that one door. This one had to be the one.

This one had a man standing outside of it.

When Morgan got to it, he was rather annoyed. He'd gone to sleep with a job and at least at that time, he'd known where he was. Now he had a headache and his body was telling him that it was the middle of the night or something - and he had no clue as to his present location on the globe. Last night, it was Alabama. Now?

"I'm supposed to come here to meet somebody," he said to the large Oriental man.

There was no response, other than the man's eyes looking him over as though he was a head of cattle who'd gotten loose and was wandering.

Morgan tried again and heard nothing.

"Fine," he said, "Fuck you then. I'm going back to bed."

He turned on his heel and took a step. The man reached out and grabbed his arm.

Morgan turned, ready to dance, as it were, if that was the intent, but the man only gestured toward the door, which now stood slightly ajar.

"This way, if you please, sir," a second Oriental man said, "I apologise for the misunderstanding. Lung there is not very personable."

"I thought it was my accent or something, "Morgan suggested, "or I thought that I wasn't making myself clear enough for him to even answer me."

"You would have gotten no answers anyway," the man said, "Lung cannot speak."

He led Morgan inside and in there; things looked just a little different. The place was dim and it had the look of something like a cavern to Morgan. The air was a trifle warm and thick with humidity.

"Odd way to decorate an office," he said quietly.

"This building was built and once used as a prison for political dissidents. It now serves other uses. This particular part of it was a more recent addition, made by knocking down the end wall and burrowing into the mountainside. Mistress Quan likes it that way."

"Mistress ... Quan?"

"Yes," the older man nodded, "Our employer. Yours as well now, I understand."

Morgan wanted to object, but he said nothing. The man led him to another chamber and pointed, "That way. Stay on the large pathway and please mind the stonework. Some of it can get a little slick at times. Mistress Quan waits for you there."

Curiouser and curiouser, Morgan told himself. Who the fuck was this 'Mistress Quan'?

He was looking down, navigating a particularly damp-looking stretch of the path where it seemed there was a little rivulet from a spring or something when he heard the voice.

It was a little deep, though very definitely female-sounding to him with a touch of a smokiness to it that made him like it. It was the odd-sounding and very slight accent which he could hear that troubled him in a vague sort of way.

"There you are," the voice said and he could even hear the smile as it was added, "Captain Morgan Brock. It's most definitely a pleasure to meet you."

The way that she'd weighted the 'you' right at the end made him even more troubled. She'd sounded something like a woman who'd just found the best pickle in the jar after a little fishing for it.

He looked up then and tried to keep his jaw from falling open.

There was an Oriental goddess there on a black silk-covered settee, sitting on her hip as she regarded him openly and with a fair bit of interest. On either side of where she sat there was a brazier of some sort with a small flame underneath and some thin and aromatic smoke curling out of it.