Inexperienced as to what he could do for them as all the Chrliti were, he could only watch as humans died all around them, sometimes bravely or even heroically, some calling out for deities he was at that point unfamiliar with. He marveled at the way they had faced it in some cases with a courage he had no understanding of or a calm he couldn’t fathom.
The Chrliti had been on Earth for less than fifty years then and had only discovered how to amplify humans for ten of those. They had little knowledge of what their bodies could do or what they could make them do. Now, he could have boosted a human to the point that he might have been able to survive even the cold, but back then, he had no idea of how to do such things.
He had tried several dozen people that night before he finally merged with one that would survive the holocaust. Even then, he could only watch as hundreds died in freezing water, several dozen of them occupied by his people.
His people were, for all intents and purposes, immortal and, as such, were unused to dealing with death on any scale, much less the kind that happened that night. Several of the Chrliti had frozen, dying with their hosts just because they simply couldn’t understand the concept.
When it was over, Charlie found himself in a member of the crew that returned to Plymouth on board the S.S. Lapland. He found it was impossible to break his occupation in time and had had to make the return voyage. While the trip was uneventful, he nonetheless found it far from enjoyable. He had simply avoided the ocean after that for decades, exploring the European and Asian continents, finally winding up in the deserts of Iraq. He had lost count of the hosts he had occupied over those decades, although if he wished, he could recall everyone. Some brave, some inhumane and cruel beyond words, he had been part of them through it all but only as an observer. Then came Terry and the unique chance among his people to really make a difference.
He had no idea the cost of this gift, but in either case, he would not waste it. So, if Terry felt this woman was to be their latest project, he would not complain. It was Terry’s choice. As he had said,
his head, his rules.
* * * *
Terry took Mir’s advice and pinched Traci’s left nipple. Her response was instantaneous, as she gasped and spun to look at him, sleep still dimming her eyes. The effect lasted only for a second though, as she smiled at him and stretched, hoping that this was the signal for more of their earlier fare.
“Umm, I could get used to getting woken up by you. Of course, that depends on whether or not you had enough to eat.”
“Uh-huh. Well, just so you know, I did and the food was as good as you said it was. But, we need to have a little talk before you get your motor running.”
Traci stiffened. It had been her experience that nothing good happened when she heard the term,
we need to have a little talk.
Terry felt the tension in her and pulled her to him. “Hey, relax. It’s nothing bad. I just wanna know if I can get you to do me a favor?”
“What kind of favor?” She had yet to relax despite his cheerful manner.
“I need to get to Chicago on business. I can wait until Monday, but I think I need to get moving on this thing. What I wanna know is can I get you to take me to the airport then keep my car until I can get back.”
Traci looked at him wide eyed. “Are you serious?” She was so stunned, she couldn’t find anything else to say.
Terry smiled at her. “That was the question. It’s no big deal. Just keep the car for me. You can drive it, wash it or not. But there’s another part to this.”
Traci’s eyebrows dropped. She knew there was another shoe to drop. What she didn’t know was that it was more like the store collapsing.
Terry looked her in the eyes and said flatly, “I want you to quit hooking. Just…stop. You’re not a hooker. It isn’t you. Why you do this shit, I don’t know, but this is not you and you need to quit.”
Traci’s eyes had gone wide again. “Are you crazy?”
Terry grinned. “I thought we had already established that. But aside from that, what’s crazy? I think you made a mistake. I think you’re still making a mistake.” He couldn’t tell her how he knew all the things he knew about her or even that he knew them, so he had to tread carefully.
“I think you want to get out of this, but you don’t know how. I’m gonna give you an out. One that I think even you can get behind real quick.”
With that, he got up and pulled out his wallet. He had three thousand dollars in it, all hundreds. He counted out ten then threw the rest on the bed.
“That’s two large. You can take it along with the five, excuse me, four hundred there on the dresser. With all of that, you can be off for at least a couple of weeks. That oughta be long enough for me to finish whatever I gotta do in Chicago. Then, when I get back…”
“When you get back what?” Traci exploded. She was not used to being played and this had all the earmarks. She looked at the money on the bed. “You just hand me two grand and some change and then ask me to what? To wait for you? Then what? You gonna come back and take me away from all this? How? You gonna marry me and make an honest woman out of me? You met me what? Three hours ago on a street corner, and now, you gonna take me home to Momma? And tell her what? Hi, Mom, look what I found! Or maybe, she followed me home; can I keep her?”
Terry’s eyes narrowed. She was bordering on hysteria, so he did his best to overlook her outburst. But there were parts that demanded an answer.
“First off, there is no mother for you to meet. Or father for that matter. Second, if there were, when you met them, you’d realize that the only thing they’d care about was if I was happy. If I were, the way my mother thought about things, the rest would attend to itself. As for marrying you? Shit, I don’t know. To tell the truth, I ain’t got that far down the road yet! But, I have been with hookers on three continents and in at least thirty states. I don’t have time for much anything else. And no, I don’t know what it is that makes a good hooker before you get around to asking that. What I do know is that you could be one, but you ain’t! And you never will be. Because whatever that thing is that makes a good hooker,
you ain’t got it!
But you are a damn good fuck! So yes! I wanna take you off the market. Maybe for a month, maybe two, hell, maybe forever. I don’t know. What I do know is that you
want
to go, you just never thought anybody was gonna show up and do it like this. Well surprise! Here I am! You don’t have to agree. But you’d pretty much be a damn fool not to. I think you’re something special. I just want the chance to make you believe it too!”
Traci stood wide-eyed while he ranted. Then, she opened her mouth, but before anything could come out, Terry shouted, “And as for being crazy, it’s kept me going for years. I tried sanity, but it was too confining, and in my line of work, that is just the wrong thing to be.”
Traci realized her mouth was hanging open. He had to be nuts. Some rich kid from out west that wanted a story to tell his preppie buddies about when he got back to the country club. Or something that made more sense than this. It was what she had always dreamed of happening. What she prayed for silently with every man she’d been with over the years, even long before she took up the trade. Was it possible that she might really have found her prince come to take her off into the night on his white stallion to live happily ever after?
It was impossible. It was insane. But she looked at the man standing before her glaring like he was, angry? Disappointed? Confused? She didn’t know what to think. Or, at the moment, how to. The money meant nothing. The car meant nothing. But she looked at him and remembered all the things he did to her. How she felt when he did them and how she longed for him to do them again, even now.
Was it worth taking the chance that he could be telling the truth? Just keep the car and take the money and stay off the streets? For how long? Even as she asked the question, she heard herself saying in her mind, this is crazy. But she listened as he answered.
“I don’t know. Tell you what. We’ll get up tomorrow and have breakfast, then you can take me to the airport, and I can get a flight from there. When I hit Chi-town, I’ll give you a call to let you know how long I think it’ll take. You…you go to a spa. Pamper yourself. Have a good time! When I get back, we can take it from there. There’s no reason to rush anything.”
For the second time, Traci looked like she was going to cry. It was insane, but if it was, it was the kind she had been hunting for all her life. Then, she started to laugh. “All this off of one fast fuck?”
Terry smiled with all the aplomb of a man who’d just made the deal of the century as he reached in to tweak her left breast again, saying as he held up his other hand, “No. Two.”
As he pushed her back on the bed and shoved his head between her thighs, he added, “Unless I decide to take a later flight. Then, who knows?”
The flight left at six thirty. Terry had time for breakfast and dinner before he had to be at the airport and a few more rounds of lovemaking with Traci before he finally, reluctantly tore himself away to let her drive him to the plane. She had been silent for the entire drive and only spoke when he was getting up to board. She grabbed his hand as if she didn’t want him to leave and squeezed.
He looked at her and smiled.
She smiled back, saying, “I’ll be here when you’re done.”
He leaned in and kissed her, his hand resting on her back. “Tell me something? Have you ever been to San Francisco?”
Her eyes went wide for a moment, but at that point, there were no more shocks to be had. “No.” she said quietly.
“Well, we’ll fix that once this is done.”
He turned to go, but she pulled him back round and kissed him again, harder this time. When she broke it, she stared at him deeply as she asked, “Are we really going to try this?”
He squeezed her hand back and smiled one last time. He kissed her forehead and said cheerfully. “We already are!”
He boarded then. Once seated in his window seat, he looked out to see her standing at the window, trying perhaps to get one last glimpse of him. She stood until the plane backed out and headed for the runway.
Now, as the plane climbed into the air over Billings, Terry settled back and went to his private place. Charlie had been silent for some time but that didn’t worry him. Charlie often went quiet for hours after a marathon session. Given the last few hours with Traci, he might not hear from him for days if he left him alone.
He slipped into the state that gave him the only true privacy he could get nowadays. Charlie might have been able to get into his little corner of his mind, but Terry was sure he wouldn’t. So, it became the only place Terry could let himself fully relax.
It wasn’t a long flight. Besides which, Terry had to learn whatever he could from the files Smyth had sent. While it was true he could probably learn more by going over them with Charlie, he liked to run through them alone first. He liked to think it was so he could look at the data without bias or commentary, just to absorb the data in its most raw form, but the truth was he wanted to do it by himself so he could claim bragging rights if he found something on his own.
Like most everything else, that disgusted Terry. People’s lives were at stake, and he was playing a silly game. Despite the tones of the day, machismo wasn’t dead, it had just gone underground.
The thought made him think of the way things had gone with his mother. She had dreamed of greater things, but after Terry had been born and she found she could have no more children, especially the daughter she had wanted so badly, she had gone back to work as a medical secretary and more or less withdrawn from Terry’s life. She hadn’t been a bad mother, just an uninvolved one. And since Terry’s father had been a workaholic all his life, Terry found himself left to his own devices on most things. Still, when young, Terry had asked questions, she had done her best to answer them or, failing that, gave him an idea of where to look for the answers. He had spent many an afternoon going through his father’s library for books concerning matters he considered of great importance.
And reading. He had loved to read the old classics, even before he was truly old enough to understand them. Shakespeare’s Othello, Cyrano de Bergerac, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Moby Dick, all stories of great heroism and stalwart men that knew right from wrong and made sure you did as well. He found he had an attraction to the Hamlets and Henry-the-Fifth types of literary heroes but not the same kind, as he found himself admiring Hamlet for his cunning and Henry the Fifth for inspirational leadership abilities. With those, he fleshed out a persona that his schoolmates found tiring and lame.
He had never cared. He preferred not to have to deal with most of them anyway. His true awakening had come when he discovered the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his legendary creation, Sherlock Holmes. He had gravitated toward tales of the master sleuth, not so much for his masterpieces of logic and observational skills, but for the flawed nature of his personal life. It was the first time he realized that to be a hero did not mean you were a perfect specimen of either manhood or ethics.
Then, Charlie had come along like an answer to all his lost dreams. And he had made things infinitely worse. Now, he had this all-but-omnipotent ally to help him wage a war against the things he thought were wrong. Now, he could be the hero who would be…
What? A savior? A leader? A role model? The realization of how limited his contribution would be was a depressing thought once Terry allowed it to take hold. He knew that despite all he would do and, in fact, all he could think to do, it would be no more than a wave in the ocean on a calm day.
But if he couldn’t save the world, he could save the parts he came across. That would have to do for now.
At the moment, that meant getting to Chicago and finding a maniac who hated cabbies. Terry had deliberately not told Traci about the particulars of the job. He didn’t know how she would react to it, and like everything he had already learned from Mir, he couldn’t let her know that he knew most of the things he did without raising some questions he couldn’t answer.