1.3  Calder Farris

The Doubletree hotel where the convention was being held was large and generic and smelled of suntan oil.  Calder Farris made his way to the registration desk where he would use his own name but not his rank.  In his civvies, no one would take him for a solider.

He kept his sunglasses on.

He didn’t expect a lot from the convention.  Its title, “Holism and the New Physics,” was typically lame.  Still, it was his job and he had other reasons to visit Orlando.  Dear old Dad.

The woman at registration had long gray hair and a gauzy skirt-and-top ensemble.  People like her were into ESP or auras or some such shit, but she obviously couldn’t have read vibes with a manual because she made the mistake of flirting with him.  She tittered on about the sessions, laying her pink hand on Calder’s black-sweatered arm.

“My goodness!” she gasped, squeezing the unyielding muscle.  She gave him a predatory gleam, her eyes telling him that she liked the iron hardness of his arm, and that she’d love to explore other hard things of his as well. 

Calder had an overpowered urge to smack her.  Instead, he removed his dark sunglasses and inspected them casually.

The woman’s hand fell to her side.  For a second he got the satisfaction of her queasy face as she stared into his eyes, mesmerized, then she busied herself with someone else.  He put the glasses back on and walked away, registration packet in hand.

There was nothing wrong with Calder Farris’ face – it was a tad lumpy, a result of teenage acne, but it had improved with age.   At thirty-two it looked more rugged than pock-marked.  He was six-foot-three and he ran and pumped weights obsessively.  With his sunglasses on he could be mistaken for the tall, dark and handsome type.  But sooner or later he had to take them off. 

It was his eyes.  His irises were a blue so light they were nearly white.  People didn’t like that.  It was as if they made a window where the cold inside him seeped through.  He couldn’t hide his essential nature when people looked into his eyes.  The demon peered out.  It was fucking inconvenient. 

But, like everything else, it had its uses. 

He sat down in the hotel bar and ordered a coffee.  He went through the list of sessions, slashing with a felt-tipped pen.

Healing and Synchronicity.  Slash.

Worm Holes and Frank Herbert’s Folding Space.  Slash.

Quantum Leaps:  Leapfrogging the Laws of Physics.

He’d been to so many of these things, he could practically give the lectures himself.  But there was always the remote possibility something useful would turn up someday, the proverbial pearl among the swine.  This topic had potential.  He flipped to the credentials of the speaker.  He recognized the name; the guy was a hack.  He slashed out the session.

The bartender refilled his coffee.  A few stools away sat two young men engaged in casual conversation.  They were obviously a couple.  That was nothing out of the ordinary for Florida or for weird science conventions like this one, wherever they might be.  That was the fucking state of the fucking country he’d vowed his life to serve and protect. 

Calder’s body tightened.  A feral smile bared his teeth.

He wished the faggots would approach him.  He’d take them out to the parking lot and teach them the true meaning of male-male penetration – his fist down their throats.

The rage inside him flared momentarily, like a black sun.  He tamped it down.  Of course, he wouldn’t really do anything, not even if provoked.  He wouldn’t touch the young men if they stuck their hands down his pants and said howdy-do.  Beating up civilians of whatever proclivity did not look good on a service record, and Calder cared very much about his service record.

Besides, he was a trained professional.  He didn’t kick ass pro bono.

A flicker of humor assuaged his anger. He refocused on the schedule of events.

A Symphony of Strings and the Theory of Everything.

Calder glanced at his watch.  It had started ten minutes ago.  He gathered up his papers and went to find the room.  He didn’t leave a tip.

The conference room held about sixty chairs and most of them were full. Calder settled down in the back and looked up the lecturer’s bio.  Dr. Larch was a young professor at Florida State.  Probably half the listeners were his students, brownnosing.  Calder sized him up.  Intelligent looking.  Showy.  The guy had the style of a talk show host.  Calder hated that.  He folded his arms over his chest and settled in to listen.

Forty-five minutes later, Calder watched the rabble stream out and kept his seat.  As usual, there were three or four super-geeks hanging around the lecturer chatting him up.  Calder doodled on his pad – guns, stark faces, dark slashes on white paper.  Once or twice Larch glanced at him curiously.

The professor finally walked by, heading for the exit.  Calder unfolded himself from the chair with deliberate display of strength.

“Dr. Larch?  I’m Calder Farris.”

Calder held out his hand.  Larch shook it.  His grip was damp but not completely mealy.

“Hello.” Larch’s greeting had the lilt of a question.  And you want . . . ?

“I’d like to speak with you about your lecture.  Can I buy you lunch?”

Larch looked him over.  “I’m . . . rather busy.”

Calder smiled.  “How about a drink then?  And it’s Lieutenant Calder Farris.  United States Marines.”

 Half an hour later, Calder sat across from Larch at an Italian restaurant down the street.  Getting out of the hotel had been Farris’ idea.  The Italian place, Larch’s.  He’d decided to get a free meal for his trouble after all.  The Marines bit had done it.  Larch probably didn’t meet a lot of Marines.  Not a lot of Marines would be caught dead anywhere in his orbit. 

“So Lieutenant Farris, what exactly do you do for the military?”

Farris poked at his salad.  “I’m in Intelligence.”

“Oh?”

“I really can’t say anything more than that.”

Larch smirked, so Calder pulled out his wallet and showed him ID.  The identification was official United States Marine Corps, had ‘Intelligence Division’ written on it and a tough-looking picture of himself in uniform.

“So what does the Intelligence Division of the Marines do exactly?” Larch asked, leaning forward.  “Reconnaissance mostly?  Isn’t that what you guys do?  What’s your interest in physics?”

“Dr. Larch.” Calder had been perfectly civil so far.  He’d even kept on his glasses, though he’d switched to a darkly-tinted pair that were not prescription but looked it.  Now he let a thread of something heavier enter his voice.  “We have limited time.  I’d like to discuss your work, if you don’t mind.”

Larch studied him for a minute.  “Can I ask in exactly what capacity you’re conducting this interview?”

“It’s not an interview, it’s lunch,” Calder explained in a reasonable tone.  “And you could ask but, well, you know . . .”

“Then you’d have to kill me.”  Larch snorted sarcastically.  Calder didn’t.  He sat and looked at Larch from behind those glasses, cold as stone.  Larch’s amusement faded into an awkward uncertainty with just a touch – yes, Calder could smell it – just the smallest trace of fear. 

It was the perfect moment and Calder didn’t waste it.  He began firing questions, calmly but insistently.  The lecture had been on string theory and there were a couple of points he wanted to explore, a few unexpected threads that had interested him.  He pressed in those directions, one by one. 

Larch talked.  Calder was pretty sure he held nothing back.  There was no reason why he should.  This stuff was probably regurgitated in front of several hundreds students every day, most of them too brain dead to pay the slightest fucking attention.  And here was a golden opportunity – a guy who actually wanted to hear him yak.

There was nothing Earth-shattering, but there were a few ideas that were new to Calder, and he stored them in his memory mechanically. 

When he was done with the conversation he let the waiter clear their plates.  He was ready to leave but Larch ordered spumoni.  Calder watched him poison his body with sugar and saturated fat and felt his muscles flex in response as if itching to work out.  In ten years, Larch was going to look like a sack of potatoes and have the use of about thirty percent of his arterial capacity.  Fucking desk jockey.

Calder glanced at his watch.  He felt as if he’d just gotten laid.  He had gotten what he wanted from Larch.  The man no longer interested him. 

“So,” Larch said, “maybe now you can tell me about your work.  Nothing classified just . . . what’s it like?  Do you travel a lot?”

“Sometimes.” 

“Married?”  Larch eyed Calder’s bare hands speculatively.

“No.”

Larch licked his spoon.  “You’re good at physics.  Did the Marines train you for that?”

Larch was only making conversation.  It was what normal people did, Calder knew that, but still the demon inside him reached out its hand and squeezed his heart until it was full and tight.  Larch wanted to poke behind the shutters, lay his soul bare.  Calder was tempted to let him.

Then he realized that he was done with Larch; he didn’t have to play nice anymore.  Slowly, he removed his glasses and smiled.

“Check?”  Larch called, signaling the waiter.

 Lieutenant Calder Farris’ ID was a lie.  He was, in fact, not with the Intelligence Division of the Marines.  He had been a Marine, still was, but when he got his break into Intelligence it had not been a position in the MCIA.  His particular skill set, most particularly his aptitude in science, had him on permanent loan to the Department of Defense. 

But not officially.  If you ran your finger down all but the most classified versions of the DoD org chart, you would not find him there.  You would find DARPA – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.  One of the branches of DARPA was the DSO – the Defense Sciences Office.  You would find the director of the DSO, Dr. Alan Ricker, one of the men Calder reported to.  You would not find Calder Farris. 

The DSO’s mission was “to identify and pursue the most promising technologies within the science and engineering research community and develop them into new DoD capabilities.”  In other words, to find Shit to confiscate, rework, and adapt into Big Bad Shit that could make the enemies of the United States turn green, shed their skin, or otherwise go away in a hurry. 

The DSO was mostly made up of civilian scientists.  They smoozed, gave grants and recruited other civilian scientists with lucrative offers.  They followed the work of people like Hawking and Feynman, subscribed to journals like Nature and Science and Cell.  They had contacts at Bell Labs and Intel and all the best universities. 

That wasn’t Calder Farris’ world.  His mission was to locate the people who weren’t in the journals: the blackballed physician in South America trying to perfect human cloning, the lone genius trying to invent smaller, more lethal bombs, the embarrassing kooks of academia who just might be onto something after all.  He stalked his prey outside the bounds of scientific credibility where technology went on all the same, often in wacky directions, sometimes with frightening results.  To the government these people were just slightly better than full-blown terrorists.  If possible, and if there was time, etc, etc, they would be won over in a friendly fashion.  If not . . .

Fortunately for Dr. Larch, his ideas were not substantial enough to be of any further interest to the DoD.

 Back at the hotel, Calder took the plastic wrapper off a glass in the bathroom and filled it up with water from the tap.  Drank it.  Filled it again and drank another.  The spaghetti marinara sloshed in his stomach.

He went to his black bag, government issue, and unpacked his Blue Dress uniform.  He used the hotel iron to remove a few suitcase wrinkles.  He showered and dressed, putting on every article as carefully as if he were heading for an inspection.  He spent several minutes in the mirror adjusting his hat and checking the alignment and shine on his medals and ribbons.  In the mirror the pale, lumpy face and white-blue eyes looked ghostly, dead, against his short black hair.  He stood to attention, his eyes on the figure in the glass.

He was pleased at how hard he looked.  He looked like one deadly bastard.  No one would ever cross him lightly.  Never again.

It was dark when he drove up to the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell and parked on the long driveway through endless white headstones.  His father had been retired when he’d kicked it, but he’d chosen this place.  His whole fucking life had been the Army.

All the markers looked alike, and there were hundreds of them, but Calder made his way easily in the moonlight.  He found his father’s grave without hesitation.

He stood for a minute in front of the headstone, his father’s decomposing flesh five or six feet beneath his shoes.  The letters on the stone read ‘Captain John Macum Farris II.’

The second.  But Calder, only son, was not John and not number three.  He hadn’t been good enough, even on the day of his naming.

Calder looked around.  He was alone.  A warm Florida breeze tickled his clean-shaven face.  He unzipped his trousers.  His piss, hot and steamy, hit the stone and trickled down into the grass.  Calder stepped to one side so he could soak the old man head to foot.

He shook himself off when he was done and zipped up.  Then he saluted the grave, ending the gesture with an upturned middle finger and a sneer.  “Hope you’re enjoying Hell, you fucking son-of-a-bitch.”