"Jesus. You couldn't have been much more than, what, eight?"
"I was nine." She looked up at the screen again, which was now dark. "Mike Dixon—the actor they chose—did an awfully good job. He even looks something like LaFayette."
A lot of things about Madeline Fathom that had always puzzled Joe now started making sense. "That's why you went into intelligence, isn't it, with a specialty in security? I wondered, since . . . well, you really don't seem the type."
She nodded. "They saved me. Killed him just before he killed all of us in the compound. My parents"—she spat the word out—"were ready to die with him. Did die with him, thank God, when they committed suicide. But they'd already stopped being anything like 'parents' to me by the time I was five. I knew they were grooming me to be one of LaFayette's so-called 'brides'—the bastard was partial to girls who'd just reached puberty—and I did everything in my power to avoid catching his attention. Which wasn't much. Fortunately, it was all over before that could happen."
The icy, calm way she spoke the words didn't seem to belong to a human voice at all. Joe groped, trying to imagine the self-control she must have started developing at an age that was normally the most carefree in a human being's life.
"I knew I couldn't fight him, that no one could fight him. But then the soldiers came, and they did fight him. And they brought me somewhere safe. I told myself when I got older that I'd make sure that people like him couldn't hurt anyone ever again, and that I'd help the people that saved me. And . . . that's what I did. I was training for it by the time I was ten. Never had any other career I wanted."
She took a deep breath, and stood up suddenly. "Sorry that I ruined things. Look, can I take a rain check on the evening. Please?"
"Sure, of course."
She smiled. "Thanks, Joe. I like you an awful lot, just so you know. But . . . this kind of thing isn't easy for me."
Joe rose also. "You want me to walk you back to your cabin?"
She chuckled, a bit darkly. "I think I can manage, even if this is the rough part of town."
"See you tomorrow, then?"
"Yes." She turned to go, stopped, and suddenly kissed him on the cheek. A moment later, she opened the door and slipped through, closing it behind her.
Joe stared at the door long after it closed, gently fingering the cheek she'd kissed.
"I will be good God-damned," he said finally.
As always in moments of stress or deep emotion, Joe's thoughts turned to food. Not eating it, but cooking it. Nothing relaxed him so much as working in the kitchen. Like most of the crew, wanting to enjoy the company and the conversations, he usually ate in the mess hall. But, needless to say, his kitchen was fully stocked.
The recipe he chose was a very tricky one. But that suited his mood—even more, his purpose.
Joe Buckley was not particularly experienced in the business of falling in love. But he was very intelligent. Falling in love with Madeline Fathom was going to be a lot trickier than any recipe, so he'd better start warming up.
Chapter 32
We are definitely making progress," Skibow said. "Oh, yes, quite a bit, thanks to you two," Dr. Mayhew agreed.
A.J. and Helen smiled together at that. They had rather warm feelings towards the linguists, who had catalyzed their relationship. "So do you want to share?"
"Well, of course, we do!" Dr. Mayhew said tartly. "Who wouldn't want to brag a bit?"
Her English accent gave her a schoolteacher air, especially with her prematurely gray hair pulled tightly back. "Take a seat and we'll give you a linguistic tour of what we've learned so far. We actually have some guesses as to the meaning of some words, which we'll get to in a bit."
"The first thing that strikes anyone when looking at these is that the writing is in curves, where we would use straight lines," Dr. Skibow began. "This seems to fit fairly well with the natural tendencies of Bemmie's manipulatory appendages and viewing arrangement. It's a bit more of a leap, however, to guess at the next level of structure. I believe we mentioned that we thought the various groupings of letters equate to words. This does rely on the assumption that the symbols are, like letters in English, basically phonetic in nature. That assumption, in turn, is based on the fact that so far we have found a very limited set of symbols used in what appear to be words—thirty-four, so far—plus a set of symbols we believe to be numerals in base nine. The very small number of symbols leads us to think they used an alphabet rather than a syllabary, although that's just a guess right now."