9.
 “I keep getting the feeling you are speaking around me, Mr. Soltan, or is that sneaking around me?” She consulted her toolpad again. Sneaking a peek, she read, frowning. Wrong context, most likely. She tapped the machine several times and its display began to swim in waves. For a moment, she stared at it uncomprehendingly, and then she felt the ground tremble faintly. Soltan jumped to his feet and looked about wildly. “What was that?”
She knew exactly what it was, but she could not tell him.
One of the members had arrived for the syndicate meeting. The best analogy was the displacement of air briefly caused by the arrival of an arriving subway train, though it was really a time/mass wave caused by something better described as resembling a whale sliding forward in a sea of colorless jelly.
“Earthquake,” he said, answering his own question, and stood crouched. He looked about in alarm. He even made little white fists as if to fight off unseen enemies.
“I think it has passed,” she said, throwing her things into the carryall. “Will you help me? I want to get my cooler to the car and leave.”
“Certainly.” They each held one handle as they struggled down the rocks to her car, while she held her paint kit by the handle and had her easel jammed under her elbow. It was clumsy going, and the easel kept slipping.
His station wagon was parked behind her car. “Will I see you again?” he asked, awkwardly dusting his palms off on his jeans.
“I don’t know, Mr. Soltan. Should you?”
He stammered: “Well, if you learn of anything...”
“If I see any aliens, and if I am near a phone, I will call you.” She waved his business card, threw it on the dash, and started the engine. While he stood looking sheepish and full of desire, she did a snappy turn, left him in a cloud of dust, and streaked away toward the motel.
She must tell Sparto, and she must also see who the very next guest was to check in. She pulled up in the parking lot and stopped the car in the shade under the same drily rustling trees as on the first night here. She opened all the windows and sat in the hot shade waiting. Opening a large roadmap to cover her face, she sat looking down at the motel slightly below. She also looked across to her left, toward the driveway entrance leading into the parking lot from the nearby access road. Soon enough, a long black car slid in, turned left, and parked near the office. She watched with pounding heart as the doors opened, and two men stepped out. One was the driver, holding one hand under the corner of his jacket as if reaching for a weapon while he looked with dangerously glittering eyes left and right. The other was an older man with wispy white hair, tall and distinguished, rather good-looking with handsome features. The negotiator for Side A, she thought. He had merciless little eyes and a cruel, ironic smile. Together the two men walked slowly toward the motel. Korinta had no way of contacting Dorio—she just hoped his people were capturing every bit of the action for possible replay in a court of law.
The two men vanished into the office, reappearing a minute later and entering a room on the first floor toward the rear of the building.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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