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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 132: Kondor 301
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 115
As they headed toward the elevator, Amanda asked, “Any chance for that cup of coffee?”
“Absolutely,” Kondor replied. “Zeke, I’ll meet you back at the apartment. I trust you can ride on the back of my motorcycle.”
Recognizing this as addressed to her, Amanda teasingly responded, “I’ll manage.”
He didn’t really know many places near the office, but there was a decent little bakery near the house that had some side tables and served a decent cup of coffee, so he drove them there. He ordered at the counter, his a simple black coffee, hers some kind of fancy coffee beverage he had never tried, and got a couple pastries to go with this. Then they chose a table in the mostly empty shop.
“So,” she ventured, “I gather that you and your partners have a lot more secrets than that you’re spies for an agency that doesn’t exist.”
He nodded, not certain where to start.
“I suppose it’s good to start with my marriage.”
“Yes, you said it was an arranged marriage. How does that happen?”
He tried to work out how much to tell, how to phrase it.
“Zeke and I were in the middle east--what was once Persia. We had thrice been involved in situations which had earned us medals from the local caliph, and in one of those we had rescued his daughter from kidnappers. We had to work with her friends, all daughters of local amirs. Then sometime after the dust had settled, a young man approached me. His father had died, leaving him the amirate and an unmarried sister, a girl who had met me at the time. He wanted me to marry her. I met with them, and learned that it was her idea--she very rationally had decided that she was going to have to marry someone, and the way politics worked it could be a very unhappy situation for her. She recognized me as intelligent and rational, reasonably kind and capable, and as a thrice-honored hero of the realm certainly qualified to marry the daughter of a noble family. I was impressed with her logic in the matter, explained my circumstances, and we agreed to get married.”
“How utterly romantic,” Amanda said in a deadpan voice. Kondor smiled and continued.
“Oh, I agree. But in a very short time we grew to love each other very much. Then her brother was asked to send troops to assist a neighboring country in order to ward off an invasion, and Zeke and I were to lead the second detachment, reinforcements of infantry. Leah went with us--a mutual decision, and we didn’t really expect trouble. It was really more of a saber-rattling situation. But we were ambushed, she was hit and dead before I could get to her. I’m not certain still that I’m over her.
“I had always figured I would never marry, because of this quandary. Because of who I am, I think that a girl who marries me should know certain things about me before she does, but it would on the one hand be unfair to get her to fall in love with me and then tell her the cost, and on the other hand probably a deal breaker to tell a girl that cost before she got to know me. The facts of Leah’s situation made that different.”
“Now you do have me curious.”
“I guessed as much. As they say in this country, in for a penny, in for a pound, so here we go.”
He composed himself before continuing.
“A few years ago I was involved in army experiments with a substance called scriff. Exactly what that is is hard to explain, and I’m not sure I fully understand it, but somehow I got infected with it. I also got killed. One thing about scriff, though, is once you’re infected it doesn’t let you stay dead--but it’s very unstable, in the sense that it doesn’t care what universe, what dimension, you’re in. I awoke in another universe where I was killed by a giant robot spider, and then was in another universe as an apparent stowaway on a cargo spaceship, and I’ve bounced around to a lot of strange and different universes since then. I met Zeke in what I’d call an alternate earth, where the United States was called United and included Cuba but not Alaska or Hawaii, and he got caught with me in an explosion which got him infected, too, so we’ve been traveling together since then. Versers--that’s what we call ourselves--never age, never stay dead, and never have children. But we do sometimes marry, and I know two versers whose wives became infected somehow, so that they travel together from universe to universe. I’m not sure why it didn’t happen with Leah; my best theory is that with Slade and Shella, and with Derek and Vashti, he--the original verser in both cases--got killed first, and she, the wife, went with him.
“In any case, I’m considering beginning a serious relationship with you. You’re smart and capable and frankly beautiful.” He grinned teasingly at this. “I could see myself marrying you, and I could see you surviving in the verse. But you needed to know what to expect, and if you never want to see me again, well, we’ve got a mission to finish, and we’ll go from there.”
Amanda sat silently for a moment, and took a slug from her drink before she spoke.
“Wow,” she said. “I don’t know how much of that could possibly be true, but it’s a wild story, and I suppose it explains why you’re a secret in addition to being a secret agent. I assume your boss--C, he’s called?--knows.” Kondor nodded.
“He has equipment that can detect scriff in people. He’s even got it in satellites, so he can track us everywhere in the world. I’m pretty sure he’s also a verser.”
“Right,” she said. “Well, thanks for the coffee, and the interesting tale.”
He nodded. It was about what he expected. “Maybe I should mention, we pick up stuff on our travels. You might remember back in the museum those men fired their machine guns at us, but none of the bullets reached us. I raised a shield--a mental trick I learned a few worlds back but never used in a fight before. It doesn’t always work, but I was rather pleased that it did at that moment.
Her eyes grew far away for a second, but then she nodded, and said, “It was a chaotic, adrenaline-soaked moment, but now that I think about it, I remember. It was very odd.” Kondor agreed in his head. The chaos of combat could be very confusing.
“Anyway,” he continued, “for the moment there’s been no talk of a safe house for you, so I think you should come to my apartment. Zeke and I have to start figuring this thing out if we’re going to stop this guy.”
Finishing his coffee, he gathered the trash and put it in the receptacle, then offered her his arm to escort her back to the bike.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
