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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 119: Kondor 295
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 290
A week later, Zeke joined him at the lab. He was tanned and windburned, and when asked what he had done had just said, “I can’t tell you now.” Kondor raised an eyebrow, but left it to his partner’s discretion. Zeke was soon integrated back into the lab group while Bradley, the volatile Svaya, and Doctor Albert Philips worked with the two agents on cold fusion. To his amusement, Deirdre started showing up every day, ostensibly to make sure her father ate, which was a problem as he could get over-involved and forget to eat. Yet, she always made time to see Zeke.
Kondor used some of his free time to wander London and uncover its hidden treasures. He visited the Tower of London on a tour arranged by Bradley who brought along several other guys, and girls, along with Deirdre and Zeke. Bradley, in addition to having a bachelors in physics, also was the guy who made sure parties happened. He was the unofficial social officer of Blackett Laboratory. He had invited the two of them at the last minute when he heard they had not been. So Kondor was standing between a history nerd girl who adored all things English as she was an American student, and a girl from Central Asia, who was off-puttingly too enthused and desirous in her obvious ploys designed to get to know him to make Kondor comfortable. That one did something at the college, but she refused to talk about herself (which Kondor thought strange) instead trying unsuccessfully to fawn on Kondor.
To be fair, both were nice girls, but neither were Leah. Nor were they even Amanda. He did enjoy learning history from the one girl even though her history was heavily feminist tainted, and the social occasion became more of a walking lecture. Seeing the Crown Jewels was something he could now say that he had done. Only afterward did he consider that the overly enthused girl might have been some sort of agent.
A week later Bradley invited him to another group outing.
“Just don’t be fixing me up with girls, Bradley. I’m interested in going to the Albert & Victoria Museum, but it’s too soon for me.” He did not add more details, but that visit he was just one of the guys instead of being obviously paired off. This allowed him to see that Deirdre was affixed to Zeke’s side, and he watched with faint amusement as she chased off in social challenges one girl after another. Zeke might tell Kondor that the two were ‘just friends’, but clearly Deirdre saw something different.
Standing in a huge well-lit gallery off the main hallway he was staring at a pre-Raphaelite painting for some time, letting its glorious beauty soothe the soul he did not believe in, when he became aware someone was standing next to him. Turning to the left, he saw a familiar black face on a shapely female body grin from the side, even as she studied the painting as well.
“Three minutes this time, Joe Kondor. A girl might get an inferiority complex around you,” Amanda said.
“Are we here to steal a painting, Saracen Sorceress?”
“Oh, tsk, those boys and their silly games of being Knights. I heard your group, unnamed, unexisting, treated them kindly. Might even have given them jobs. So thanks.”
Kondor nodded. He had told C that he thought the Knights of Camelot were white hats, and while occasionally lawbreakers more to be directed into a good path than slapped down hard for any excesses. C had agreed, and Gear had averred that Merlin, the Knights tech hand, ‘showed some promise’.
“But now that they’ve become semi-official, I can’t use them. So I need your help.”
“The way I remember it, you, Amanda Not-Herrington, owed me a favor. Now you’re requesting another because I took your toys away from you.”
She leaned over, poked his chest gently with one long fingernail, and looked up into his eyes with a flirtatious grin.
“Nothing gets past you, does it, secret agent man?”
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #533: Characters Traveling. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
