Bioterror! (an Ell Donsaii story #14) Page 14

  Zage shook his head, he was looking out the window and now he pointed. “I think that’s my mom, Aunt Morgan and Aunt Lane. Oh, and that’s probably your sister Tina too, right?”

  AJ looked out the window and saw that it was indeed the four women. It looked like they were coming into the lodge too. “I think you’re right.” AJ glanced around and said, “You want to take my coat and go sit at that empty table there? Spread my coat and your coat and our hats out on top of it to hold the table for when they get here. Then we can all sit together.” He started shrugging out of his coat.

  Zage looked up at him uncertainly, then back out at the table, then turned back to AJ and held up his hands for the coat, “Sure.”

  AJ had his coat off and Zage was tugging on it when he started to worry that sending a five-year-old to hold down a table might not be appropriate. He didn’t have much experience with kids and really had no idea. “Or, you can stay here with me and we’ll just try to find a table when they get here.”

  Zage gave another tug on the coat, “No, I can do it, no problem.”

  “Okay, I’ll be right here keeping an eye on you. Just yell if there’s a problem.” As the kid clumped off toward the table with AJ’s enormous looking coat in his arms, AJ called after him, “Was this really your first day skiing? You’re awfully good.”

  Zage gave AJ what he could’ve sworn was a stricken look back over his shoulder. AJ thought it looked as if the boy felt embarrassed, as if skiing well was something to be ashamed of. But other than a shrug Zage didn’t respond to AJ’s question. He got to the table and climbed up onto the bench, spreading AJ’s coat out in the middle. Then he took off his own coat and spread it at one end and went to sit at the other end, putting his hat on the table there.

  Feeling guilty for sending a five year old out to save a table in a fairly large room moderately crowded with adults, AJ kept a careful eye on the kid. He sat there looking… surprisingly mature for a five-year-old. He didn’t fidget or run around, or any of the other irritating things AJ might’ve expected a child Zage’s age to do. It’s like he’s grown up before his time, AJ thought.

  Then the four women entered the room and Zage jumped up on top of his bench, waving his arms and shouting, “Mom. Mom! Aunt Morgan, Aunt Lane!”

  Suddenly Zage looked like a kid again.

  Rather than call across the room, AJ had his AI ask Morgan if she and the other women wanted any hot chocolate while he was at the counter. She responded, “Of course, big ones with whipped cream!”

  When AJ got back over to the table with four big hot chocolates and two little ones, his family, old and new, were all excitedly talking. AJ sat down next to Raquel and said, “Wow! Your kid’s an amazing skier!”

  To his surprise, she didn’t look happy to hear that. In fact, she darted a frustrated look at her son, who produced a palms-up shrug as if saying, “Sorry, it was an accident,” or something on that order. Raquel had turned back to AJ by that point, saying, “That’s great to hear. I hope he wasn’t too much trouble?”

  “Oh no! Not at all. Very polite and really easy to teach.” AJ narrowed his eyes, “In fact, we finished up the morning going down a heavily moguled black diamond, which I found pretty astonishing.” He glanced at Zage who was watching his mother rather than AJ. “I asked him if he really hadn’t ever been skiing before, and he just gave me a shrug. Can you tell me what the deal is? Because I’m having a really hard time believing he just started skiing this morning.”

  Raquel glanced at Morgan, Lane, and Tina who were still chattering excitedly about their runs. Her eyes came back to AJ and she leaned closer to him to speak quietly, “If you don’t mind, I’d really like to talk to you about that tonight, not now in this crowded room, okay?”

  What?! AJ thought. It makes no sense that this would be some kind of secret. So the kid’s an amazing skier—we should be talking about getting him into some kind of training program so he can realize his potential, not treating it like it’s something to be hidden! Still, Raquel was his sister-in-law to be. If she didn’t want to talk about it here, it wasn’t his place to argue with her. To Raquel, he said, “Sure, I just wanted to say…”

  Raquel interrupted him with a hand on his forearm and an intense look, “Later… okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, feeling a little irritated. All this secrecy was way over the top.

  Raquel gave him a big smile and turned to join the conversation amongst the rest of the people at the table. However, AJ was still thinking about what’d happened and so he didn’t miss it when she turned away from the conversation a few minutes later and quietly addressed Zage. She said, “I told you to read up on skiing.”

  The kid gave her a hangdog look and said, “Sorry Mom.”

  She ruffled his hair and laughed, “Don’t give me those puppy dog eyes! You know I can’t stay mad at you when you look like that.” Then, enigmatically, she said, “I can only hope that’s the worst mistake you ever make.”

  Mistake?! AJ thought wonderingly. What kind of mistake did the kid make?! He skied beautifully, how in the world can that be a mistake!

  That evening, as everyone was getting dressed to go out to dinner, Morgan turned to AJ. “Hey, Mr. Fiancé, I need to talk to you about something kind of serious.”

  AJ turned, his stomach dropping as he wondered if he’d done something wrong without realizing it. Morgan didn’t look mad though. “What is it?” He asked.

  “It’s about Zage and his skiing.”

  “The kid’s freaking amazing! Did you hear me trying to tell Raquel about it?”

  “Um, no, but Raquel talked to me about your conversation later.” Morgan stared at him for a minute, not saying anything. At first, AJ thought she was searching for words, but when did she start to talk he thought the pause might’ve been just to lend gravity to what she was about to say. “It’s really… really important that you not talk about it, okay?”

  “But… but why?! Raquel shouldn’t be hiding this! She should be trying to get him training! You’d expect someone that’s this good at age five would grow up to be an Olympic contender!”

  Morgan took his hand as she spoke quietly, “My family keeps a secret for one of my uncles. Mom, dad, Shan, my sister, we all know about it, but none of us ever talk about it except to one another and even that’s very seldom. It’s a secret that’d be a disaster for my uncle if it got out, so, it’s really important, and we go to great lengths to keep it to ourselves.”

  Puzzled, AJ said, “What is it?”

  Morgan shook her head, “That’s the deal. I can’t tell you. I’d trust you with my life, but you really have no ‘need to know,’ so I’m not going to tell you. It’s the kind of secret that we don’t tell even family members just because they’re curious. I can’t imagine why you’ll ever have a need to know, so I don’t expect we’ll ever be telling you.” She tilted her head as if assessing his reaction, “Can you understand that?”

  AJ shrugged, “Sure.” He frowned, “But how could this secret have anything to do with Zage’s skiing?”

  Morgan shook her head, “It doesn’t. This’s a different secret from my Uncle’s. And this’s a secret that you probably will need to know someday. In fact, it’d have been good if you’d known it today, so I want to tell you about it now.”

  “Oh,” AJ gave a nod, “okay.”

  “But, I’m wanting to make sure you understand that this’s serious. Really serious. Not something you talk to your buddies about over a beer. I need you to know that if you let it slip out, I, and everyone else in the family are going to be very disappointed in you.”

  “Morgan, I understand. I’ll defend this secret against all comers, whatever happens.”

  “Okay, now imagine you were an amazing and famous athlete, and, because of that, you never got any privacy. People and paparazzi hounded you all the time, wanting you to do this and that and making various demands. Sometimes you’re even attacked by people trying to force you to do things. Now, you ha
ve a child, who’s also an amazing athlete…”

  AJ studied Morgan, wondering what the hell she was trying to say.

  “And you want that child to have a normal life…”

  Someone knocked on the door. Morgan turned and called out, “Sorry, we’re going to be a little late. We’ll meet you at the restaurant.”

  A muffled “okay” came through the door and Morgan turned back to him.

  AJ said bemusedly, “Are you trying to say that Shan’s some kind of famous athlete?” Then he shook his head disbelievingly, “That can’t be. He’s famous, he’s got a couple of Nobel Prizes for God’s sake. But if he was a famous athlete too… I’m sure I’d know about it!”

  Morgan gave him a sympathetic smile, “No, we’re talking about Zage’s mother.”

  “Raquel?” Then AJ shook his head, dismissing that as ridiculous, “Oh, wait, are they raising Zage for someone else?”

  “Raq—Ell,” Morgan said, separating the two syllables and emphasizing the second one.

  “Shan and Raquel are raising Ell Donsaii’s child?! AJ said with a sudden rush of understanding.

  “Nooo,” Morgan said slowly, “Raquel and Ell are the same person.”

  AJ stared at his fiancée, uncomprehending.

  “So, you can imagine that the world’s most astonishing athlete might have a child who could learn to ski in one day, right? And since Ell’s been kidnapped and attacked in various ways, you might understand how she’d want her son kept out of the kind of life she’s led publicly. That she might be afraid some of those kinds of people might try to use her son as a lever to control her.”

  “But… They look so diff… they can’t be the same person!”

  Morgan gave him a sympathetic smile, “Not ‘they,’ dummy—‘she,’ looks so different. Some time, when you two are alone, you could ask her to change in front of you. It’s pretty amazing.”

  As AJ and Morgan rode in their car on the way to the dinner, AJ suddenly said, “Wait, Ell was mad…”

  Morgan interrupted him, putting a hand on his arm and saying, “Never call her Ell unless she’s done up as Ell. You don’t want to get in a bad habit and then someday give her secret away by accidentally calling her that in public.”

  AJ paused to think about that for a second, then nodded. “Raquel was mad at Zage for not reading about skiing before he came. Why was he supposed to read about it? He did just great without knowing anything before he started.”

  “Yeah, but he wasn’t supposed to do great. He was supposed to watch the other kids and ski no better than the good ones. He was supposed to have read enough about skiing that if you tried to take him on an intermediate slope, he’d know that a beginner his age would have a hard time with it. And, if his idiot uncle tried to take him on a black diamond, he was supposed to know that he should be terrified and start calling the police because he was being subjected to child-abuse!” She grinned at him to soften the words.

  AJ said, “But, but… it wasn’t abuse. I could… could tell that he’d be able to ski that slope.”

  Morgan snorted, “Yeah, I’ve no doubt. But he wasn’t supposed to let you try it!” She got a dreamy look on her face, “I know what you mean though. I was with…” She stumbled a little bit, obviously having been about to say “Ell.” Instead she continued by correcting herself to say, “Raquel, the first time she ever went skiing. She knew nothing about skiing and had no idea how well the average person could ski on their first day. You should’ve seen her go! I’ve never seen anybody ski that well. You know how she’s the world’s greatest gymnast, and sprinter, and golfer? I’m sure she could add greatest skier to that list if she wanted to.” Morgan snorted, “When I confronted her about the fact that she was skiing far too well for somebody who was just starting out, she looked embarrassed but then just told me a bald-faced lie about how she actually had skied before!”

  When they got to dinner, AJ found himself sitting across from Raquel. Try as he would, he couldn’t seem to stop studying her face. She was tall, slender and graceful, those things matched the Ell Donsaii AJ knew of and had seen around D5R. But she walked differently, her skin was a shade darker and her face had a different shape. Even her eyes were a different color. He simply couldn’t reconcile the two.

  She gave him an amused smile and a wink, then said, “Thanks for taking Zage under your wing today. It looks like you understand the issues now?”

  He gave her a wondering nod…

  ***

  Mark Amundsen followed Bridget down the hall to Ell’s office. He certainly could’ve found it by himself and felt a little bit surprised that, as informally as they did things at D5R, Bridget hadn’t just told him to go on back. When they got back to her little office, they found her slouched back in her chair, eyes roaming from screen to screen. He realized that practically every bit of the wall surface of her office was covered with screens, all of them currently lit up with various charts, graphs, CAD drawings, three-dimensional images… and a weird image that looked kind of like a galaxy.

  As soon as he came into view, she bounced up out of her chair and came around her little desk to greet him. “Hi Mr. Amundsen! I hope your wife likes the area?” She waved him into a chair and asked if Bridget could get him some coffee which he declined.

  “Please, call me Mark. You’re the last person in the world who should be calling me ‘Mr.’” He smiled and continued, “Mary’s worried that there won’t be enough traffic congestion down here to live up to her standards. Otherwise she thinks the area’s really great!”

  “Do you feel like you’ve seen everything you need to see?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded slowly, “but there’re still some big questions bothering me. When I ask your people about certain things, they just refer me back to you.”

  She gave him a wry glance, “I suspect I know what those things are and they either didn’t know or rightfully didn’t want to disclose them.” She grinned and gave him a questioning look, “My due diligence people tell me we really want to hire you. Other than the things you got stonewalled about, are there any other reasons you wouldn’t take the job?”

  “Well, no, but I must admit that some of the things they’ve referred back to you make me pretty uncomfortable.”

  “Okay,” she said leaning forward in her chair and fixing him with an intent gaze, “let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. What’s worrying you?”

  “First of all, the Board of Directors. If I’m going to be answering to them, I’d kind of like to know who they are. Your people’s responses to questions on this issue have varied from telling me that they’re anonymous, to telling me that the board only interfaces with you, to telling me that they don’t know who they are!” He hesitated, then plunged ahead, “I expect the board to be tough, but some boards have people on them that’re just plain hostile. I’d rather not be CEO if there’re going to be some people on the board I can’t work with.” He lifted an eyebrow, “Nobody on your staff’s even willing to show me the minutes for any of the board meetings. I can understand why they might feel that’s privileged information, but it’s the kind of thing that’d give me a feel for just how contentious things can get around here.”

  Ell nodded, “What else?”

  Mark blinked. He’d expected an answer to the first question before being asked to pose another one. He shrugged and said, “The financials. The bookkeeping and numbers seem to be sound and to make sense—as far as I’ve been allowed to inspect them. There’s this big area of the company that’s completely transparent and makes a lot of sense, but then there’s what I’ve been likening to a black hole off to one side. Parts of the company make huge excess profits; what doesn’t get reinvested is siphoned off into the black hole. Other sections of the company, most notably the R&D section that’s actually named D5R, and Quantum Biomed, run in the red almost all the time.” He held up his fingers and made little air quotes, “The ‘black hole’ apparently just coughs up money to make up their deficits without anyone h
aving to answer for it. I assume the investors have set aside some kind of capital reserve but no one seems to know anything about it or how much reserve there actually is. I find it a little frightening that nobody has any idea how much of a cushion the company has if some kind of disaster strikes.”

  Ell gave him another understanding nod, “Anything else major?” She shrugged, “Or minor but important?”

  Wanting to roll his eyes at the way she’d just ignored his queries so far, instead Mark said, “Though you told me not to worry about it, I remain concerned that there aren’t any nice offices or board rooms or any exotic looking facilities we can use to impress board members or investors when they come to visit.” He waved a hand around, “Your own office here, for instance. It seems highly functional, but as the CEO I’d expect you to have a nice large office with windows somewhere where you could entertain people with money. Personally, I’d be perfectly comfortable in an office like this one, but when somebody who thinks of themselves as a big shot comes to visit, I’d want something a little more… impressive. Something that’d keep them from thinking we’re running on our last nickel.” He winked at her, “For instance, my reaction when I saw your office was that perhaps the company wouldn’t be able to pay me even as well as I was compensated in the public sector.” He shrugged, “To tell the truth, I think I’d be happy working here for less than the government paid me, but the fact that such a question came to mind when I walked in suggests our investors would have similar concerns whenever they come visit.”

  Ell grinned, “Anything else?”

  He shook his head, “Nothing of significance.”

  She said, “You’re comfortable that any further discussion of these issues still falls under our confidentiality agreement?”

  He shrugged, “Of course.”

  She smiled, “You might feel like I’ve just been letting questions pile up one on top of the other, but I suspected all your questions would have essentially the same answer, ‘me.’”