Liz had to smile at Miggy Tremelo's ill-contained frustration. He'd had several minor fumes at various aspects of the PSA's new "system" ever since she and Jerry had arrived five minutes back. The PSA kept dragging its way into the conversation like some kind of pernicious disease. It was obviously driving him up the wall. She could identify with that. Minor bureaucrats who seemed to derive enormous satisfaction from making petty matters into insurmountable obstacles, and saying "no" whenever possible, had been a feature of her life, especially lately. Normally Miggy and Jerry would be feet deep in animated theoretical discussion by now. It was obviously preying on Tremelo's mind almost to the exclusion of everything else. She wished that Lamont would get there. Even a few puns would be welcome, although she could never admit that in public.
Then the Jacksons arrived. And it was immediately apparent that things with Marie were not improving. Even the kids were silent, which as Liz knew from their previous get-togethers, was straight un-natural. Little Tyrone normally was the best reason she'd ever come across for having silencers fitted to all kids at birth. As they said back in South Africa, the kid had been born with the volume control stuck on full. And the twin girls had competed with his volume by doing it shrill and in stereo. Only the fifteen year-old live-in nephew, Emmitt, seemed to be the same as usual. He hadn't smiled much then and he wasn't smiling now. They all looked like they were heading for a funeral.
Which was accurate.
Marie's.
"He said I've got secondaries in my liver and my chest cavity already," said Marie, calmly. "Too late for chemotherapy, too late for surgery. I've got about three months. It doesn't hurt much."
She was the only one who appeared to be calm, and talk about it. "I'm sorry, Miggy. I've come to give my notice. There's no point pretending I'm just on sick leave, any more. Me and Lamont and the kids, we want to spend as much time as we can together now. While we can."
"At least money's not really an issue any more," said Lamont with a sigh. "I never thought I'd be able to say that."
"Ain't no use cryin', for heaven's sake. I thought we'd maybe go on a road-trip. See places we've never seen."
Lamont nodded. "We wanted to fly to Greece. But it seems like I'm a national asset, not to be risked in a foreign country. It's an attitude I wish they'd had when they sent me to Vietnam."
Standing aside, talking to Jerry, Lamont looked like a skyscraper that just lost its foundations. "What the hell is the use of having all the money in the world if I haven't got Marie? I reckon my luck has deserted me, Jerry."
He bit his lip, his eyes downcast, voice shaking. "I'd swap anything in the world, just to make her well. That's the worst kind of luck that can happen to any man. I was the luckiest man in the world, thanks to Tyche. Now, I think I'm the unluckiest. Marie's... she's my life, I guess."
Jerry didn't quite know what to say. He just leaned over squeezed Lamont's shoulder.
The telephone rang.
"I'm not taking any calls right now," snapped Miggy.
"But, Professor, it's Ms. Garnett," said Rachel Clements, popping her head around the door. "And she is... well, insistent."
Marie rubbed her hands. "Shall I deal with her? For old times sake?"
Miggy Tremelo smiled for the first time since he'd heard her news. "I'm tempted. But I'd better handle it. As little as I like that woman, I'll have to deal with her, for the foreseeable future."
"And I won't have to cope with the aftershocks, I guess," said Marie.
Miggy picked up his phone. "Professor Tremelo speaking."
The person on the other end was shouting. Not quite loud enough for the rest of them to make out all the words. Just: sphinx.
"I am afraid that you're blaming the wrong person," said Miggy. "But I strongly advise you not take on the environmental lobby over..." He held the phone away from his ear, and then put it down on the cradle.
He looked at the phone as if it was an envenomed serpent. "I should have let you handle it after all, Marie. Still, I think that woman may have bitten off more than she can chew, this time."
"What's happened?" asked Liz, curious.
"It appears that certain PSA agents were observed loading Throttler on a cargo plane at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. God only knows how they talked her into getting on it—without getting killed in the process."
Miggy smiled beatifically. "And, while PSA can ride roughshod over most things... Not the Endangered Species Act. Throttler and the dragons have been declared endangered species, if you recall, and now it appears that the two Greek dragons have disappeared too. It hasn't taken the wildlife authorities long to put the two together, and go public about it. It would appear that when their rare and endangered species are involved—especially crowd-pullers—Fish and Wildlife don't actually care if you're the head of the PSA. Especially since one of the loopholes in that screwball Swiss cheese legislation they call APSA exempts them from PSA authority."
Jerry's eyes widened. "It does? Why, in God's name?"
Miggy's grin was almost scary, now. "What do you think? The usual trading and swapping you get whenever Congress rushes through legislation too quickly. One of the key legislators involved—Montana's Senator Frank Larsen—saw a chance to do a favor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He's very partial to them, partly because he's an avid outdoorsmen himself, and partly because his nephew Mark O'Hare happens to be the agency's director."
Lamont chuckled. "So an agency nobody thinks has anything to do with 'alien pyramid security' gets a better deal from APSA than the CIA or the FBI, or even the military. What a laugh. It reminds me of something I read once. If a police car, a fire truck, and an ambulance—all answering emergencies with their lights flashing and their sirens blowing, mind you—come to an intersection at the same time as a Post Office van making routine deliveries, guess which vehicle legally has the right of way?"
"The Post Office vehicle," said Miggy. "Of course, in the real world, no postman would even think of not pulling over to let the emergency vehicles go past him first—but, legally, he could pull rank on them if he wanted to. Yup, and that's technically the situation here. Except that in this instance, Fish and Wildlife is hopping mad. Mad enough, even, to be willing to take on that woman publicly."
"What does Garnett want Throttler for, in the first place?" asked Liz. Militantly, she twitched the strap of her new shoulderbag. It wasn't yet as full of useful things as the old one had been. It still felt unnatural and quite emaciated, poor thing. It couldn't weigh more than five pounds. "They better not hurt her. She's biologically priceless."
"So, it would appear, Ms. Garnett has just been told by the Fish and Wildlife director. She somehow reached the conclusion that I had told the conservation authorities that the creatures were to be brought here. How I was supposed have done that when this is the first that I've heard about it, I don't know. But I suspect logic is not her best friend."
"I don't think logic even gets near her mind," said Jerry, shaking his head, "unless it involves political maneuvering. The PSA still hasn't allowed me back to the Oriental Institute to collect my papers, although I have absolutely zero chance of being snatched."
"Or let me back to the Department of Ecology and Evolution," said Liz with a grimace. "And quite a lot of my documentation is still sitting there. Documents Immigration and Naturalization want."
"I'll get some of my people onto that," promised Miggy Tremelo. "Still, I think its a good thing that we have nothing to do with her dragon-problem. It'll probably explode on her."
"The thing to get into your head," said Cruz, patiently, "Is that the people you're facing, as Doc explained to me, are the idealized warriors of their age. That means they've been fighting all their lives. They're more used to cold-blooded killing than any US mass-murderer. And to them you are a barbarian. If you're not Greek, you're a barbarian. A Greek life isn't worth that much. A barbarian's life is worth a little less than that of a stray dog. They don't know what your human rights are, because you aren't human. Only Greeks are."
Agent Stephens blinked. "We're posing as Greeks."
Cruz shrugged. "At a distance, maybe." Greeks with hidden rifles, 50. caliber IDF Desert Eagles, abseil gear, night-vision goggles, laser sights, heat-seeking RPGs...
And not a clue. Some of that gear could be useful, maybe. Depending on what it turned into.
"Anyway, to be frank with you, Sergeant, they're not up to our level of training," said Bott, practicing assembling his rifle. He might be faster at that than a bastard like Odysseus would be at dismantling him before he was finished, but Cruz wouldn't bet on it.