“And what does ‘secure’ mean?” Amarylis looked coolly down at Brickman after his announcement that their first order of business was moving her somewhere secure.
“A place we can control access.” He turned around in a circle, waving his arms in the air. “We have no control here, see? So far, we’re keeping nosy people away from the immediate airspace, and we’ve shut down cell towers in the local area, but those are leaky Band-Aids. At some point the shit is going to hit the fan, and it’s gonna fly all over the goddamn world.”
Amarylis wrinkled her nose. “That is a colorful metaphor.”
“I’m not a diplomat, ma’am. Which is part of why we need to get you somewhere else, some place people over my pay grade get to meet you and some place we can start planning how to construct…” He turned to Pick. “What’d you call it?”
“It’s what she called it. A gate. A gate to other worlds.”
“Right. This time on purpose.”
Brickman slid his sunglasses back onto his muzzle. “Again, above my pay grade. Let’s get you out of here first. Mr. Pick and Miss Gilchrist—”
“Ms.,” Gilchrist corrected, over-pronouncing it for emphasis.
“Mr. Pick and Mizzzz Gilchrist suggested an old blimp hangar at a military airfield about five miles from here that’s jointly operated by their company and the DOD. That’s ‘Department of Defense,’ the guys who oversee all our military. I’ve got provisional clearance from all the higher-ups, so we can head out. Problem. There’s a freeway between here and there. That’s a road, with five lanes of traffic in each direction, of vehicles like those cars.” He pointed to the parking lot, studiously ignoring the death glare Gilchrist was aiming at him.
“I see. They do look quite fragile.”
“They’re…” The lion trailed off, looking directly at one of her bigger-than-car-sized forepaws. “Yeah, let’s go with fragile. We’re going to have the Highway Patrol block traffic, but we’re still trying to figure out how to hide you.”
“You shouldn’t try,” Sandy called.
Brickman stared at Sandy for several silent seconds, as if he’d just noticed the ocelot, then turned to Pick and Gilchrist. “Who the fuck is the guy on her shoulder?”
“That’s her hostage, sir,” one of the MIBs said. “Remember when you said we shouldn’t negotiate before you got here?”
“You didn’t say hostage negotiation! Christ on a pogo stick.”
“Sandy is not my hostage,” Amarylis snapped.
“Then set him down!” Brickman pinwheeled his arms.
Sandy shook his head. “I’d rather stay here.”
Amarylis’s face remained impassive, but her massive tail wagged behind her for a few seconds.
Brickman looked apoplectic. “A civilian shouldn’t be in the middle of this!”
The vixen’taur lifted her brows. “I should not be in the middle of this, and yet here I am.”
Gilchrist visibly gritted her teeth, too. She looked at Pick. “What’s his name again?”
“Sandy Nelson.” Pick looked up at Sandy. “If Amarylis wants you there and you want to be there, stay there,” he called.
Brickman gave him a death glare. The panther crossed his arms, glaring back challengingly. Gilchrist looked confused, then shook her head, muttering something under her breath that might have been I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.
“I can’t—” The lion threw his hands into the air. “Okay, Nelson, you tell me why we shouldn’t try to hide her.”
“Uh, well, first off, how? You can’t exactly throw her in the back of an unmarked van.”
“I don’t know. Cover her with something. Block line of sight somehow. Dispute any photos or video.”
“Dispute how?”
He waved a hand, looking irritated. “We have procedures for UFO sightings.”
Sandy crossed his arms. “I don’t think telling everyone who takes pictures of her that she’s just a weather balloon is going to work.”
“Weather balloon?” Amarylis murmured.
“Uh, when we have time, I’ll try to explain.”
Brickman took off his sunglasses and rubbed his temples. “We all understand there’s a limit to what can be done, kid, but if word gets out that we have a giant goddamn alien—”
“There are like a thousand people working on this campus alone with cameras built into their phones, Mr. Brickman. Security through obscurity never works in the long run, and it’s not even going to work in the short run for this.”
Pick nodded approvingly.
“And what would you suggest?” The sarcasm in Brickman’s tone was thicker than molasses.
“The truth as we understand it?”
Brickman and Gilchrist both shook their heads at that. “That’s simplistic.” “We can’t just do that.” “You don’t understand the situation—”
Amarylis cleared her throat and stomped a forepaw, immediately drawing everyone’s attention, then spread her hands, looking down. “I do not think you understand the situation, but you could remedy that if you start speaking with me rather than around me.”
Brickman swallowed, looking up at her. “Go on, ma’am.”
“I am what we call a Gatekeeper. I understand how the system of gates between the worlds works, and I understand how to operate it, and I have a deep understanding of magic that affects it. All I need is the information and resources to help you make another temporary gate to return me. We should be able to do this in as little as a day. Afterward, I can send magicians—or engineers, from other worlds—back here to help you construct a more permanent solution, as well as educators to prepare you for what you are stepping into.”
Gilchrist, Pick, and Brickman looked at one another. Then Gilchrist looked up at Amarylis. “What would you want in return for that help?”
The giantess furrowed her brows. “I do not understand the question.”
“I mean in return for your help to us. For helping us build a permanent gate. What would you want? Or your people.”
“Ma’am,” Brickman cut in, looking at Gilchrist, “what did we agree to about negotiation?”
“We didn’t agree to anything.” Pick glared at Brickman. “You just relayed a command through your associate.”
“Same thing.”
“What I want, personally, is simply to go home.” Amarylis sounded slightly frustrated. “I am not a diplomat or a dignitary, and I am not the one you should be ‘negotiating’ with. Customarily, though, what we expect from new races, at first, is to be good citizens.”
“Meaning what?” Brickman sounded wary.
“For a start?” She pointed at the military helicopter, voice growing sharper. “Not treating me like a potential enemy. I am painfully aware my appearance here caused damage and casualties and I am heartsick over it, but I am also aware that it is not an accident I caused. Just help me get home. Is this truly somehow unreasonable?”
Everyone’s ears went back, including Sandy’s. Brickman looked like he’d swallowed a lemon for a moment. Then he signaled to one of the tiger MIBs, who nodded and started murmuring, a finger to his earpiece. The helicopter pulled back.
“Now. Unless you have transport technology none of you have admitted to yet, the only way for me to get from here to the ‘old blimp hangar’ you referred to is for me to walk there. I am aware that doing so means more confirmation to your world of, as you put it, the giant goddamn alien, but that song has already been sung, has it not?”
He sighed. “Yes, I guess it has. Ma’am. We should have the logistics worked out momentarily.” He looked to the other tiger MIB, who held up a finger for two seconds, then nodded. “In fact, we can move out now.”
“Very well.”
The lion and the two tiger MIBs who came with him headed back toward the sedan. “Follow my car, at a safe distance,” he called to Amarylis. Gilchrist headed toward her car, too. Pick started in that direction, but more slowly, looking back at the giantess.
She held out a hand by Sandy. “I do not think it is safe for you to ride on my shoulder on this trip, and I do not have any carrying pouches on me.”
“Uh, right.” He climbed onto her hand. The idea of being carried in a pouch didn’t seem that appealing, anyway. But—
His ears folded back, and he looked up at her as she lowered the hand to the ground. “If we get separated, they probably won’t let me see you again, so I guess we should say goodbye now.”
She blinked, pausing with her hand about ten feet off the ground.
Pick raised a hand. “I’ll give you a ride to the base.”
Amarylis looked down at Sandy questioningly; he gave her a thumbs-up. “If you do want to see me there, this is probably the best shot.”
“I do.” She lowered her hand the rest of the way to the ground, and he hopped off.
Pick led him toward another part of the parking lot. Amarylis watched them go a few seconds, then turned her attention to Brickman’s car as it started to move.
“Okay.” Pick pointed at one of the cars in the half-abandoned parking lot, an older European sedan painted a markedly unattractive olive green. “I know I’ve seen you around the research campus, but I don’t think we’ve ever talked. What is it you do?”
“Tools programming.”
“You like it?” Pick opened the driver’s door, and waited for Sandy to get in before he climbed in, too.
“It’s…” Sandy fastened the seatbelt. “Sure. It pays well and I’m pretty sure my position is secure.”
Pick pulled out, circling the lot and joining the growing line of police cars and unmarked sedans in front of, behind, and to either side of the vixen’taur, who looked decidedly nervous as she placed each paw just so. “So that’s a no.”
Sandy’s ears lowered a moment, and he laughed self-consciously. “Well, it’s just not what I signed up for when I joined BRC, Mr. Pick. But I like what I’m doing well enough.”
“What did you sign up for?”
“Symbolic machine learning.”
Pick deftly swerved around an MIB trying to wave him off from joining the convoy, flashing his employee badge at the man as he went past. The tiger looked after them, confused. “Ah, Bill’s AI group.”
“Yeah. When it was disbanded, they didn’t bring me on to the new group working on LLMs. I mean, I didn’t ask to be on it. They’re interesting, but…”
“They’re parlor tricks.”
“I don’t know if I’d say that.” Actually, he would say that, just not to a company executive. “They look like they’ve gotten further in a few years than symbol-based strategies have in decades.”
“The key word there is ‘look.’ You think that, too, or you would have asked to be working on them.”
He sighed. “Yeah.”
“So inertia is why you’re still at BRC.” Pick shrugged, then slowed down as he pulled between two black sedans. That put them about five cars behind Amarylis, who still looked huge from this vantage point. “How’d you end up…?” He pointed at the giantess.
“Dumb luck? I wasn’t in the lab, so didn’t get caught in the damage, but I stayed close enough for Amarylis to see and, uh, catch.” His ears flicked. “That doesn’t sound right. I mean, she did, but she had to talk to someone. She would have let me go if I’d asked.”
“You’re sure about that?”
He nodded, looking over at the panther. “I am. She did let me go. I asked her to put me back on her shoulder.”
Pick lifted his brows.
Sandy shrugged self-consciously. “She’s scared. It’s what I could do to help.”
The older man nodded, falling silent, watching Amarylis as they turned off the campus driveway onto an actual street, starting to slowly pick up speed. Intersecting streets had been blocked off. When they turned onto an actual boulevard, two lanes in each direction and a median strip in the center, the giant ’taur started to walk faster—then abruptly slowed down, looking back and forth in a disconcerted way. The concrete road was cracking under her weight. Pick braked sharply. “Guess I should have taken the Jeep today,” he muttered, slowly rolling forward over the now-uneven surface.
Amarylis started moving more gingerly, and the convoy continued.
Sandy watched her movement for a minute or two, the rise and fall of the paws. Even as gingerly as she walked, and even as far back as they were, they could subtly feel each of her footsteps. Her right paws were in the lane ahead of them; her left took up the opposite lanes.
Then Amarylis came to a stop, as the cars ahead of her continued on. Sandy shifted position, trying to see. This road led right to the airfield, but got there by crossing over the freeway, and they’d come to the overpass, which they’d stopped the giantess from walking on to.
“So now what?” Pick muttered.
After another half a minute, they got an answer. Traffic on the freeway stopped, police blocking it, too, in both directions. More MIB types started walking back along the convoy, holding out their hands. “Wait for further instructions,” one said, tapping on the driver’s side window. Pick nodded, turning off the engine.
Then, Amarylis stepped onto the overpass, very tentatively, just one paw. Slowly, she put down the next.
“Seriously?” Pick got out of the car, standing to watch. Sandy did, too. So were others—a lot of government agents, along with company bigwigs the ocelot recognized only from photographs on the website.
Sandy’s breath caught. “Can that actually support her weight?”
“She wouldn’t weigh more than a couple fully loaded eighteen wheelers. But the weight and force is distributed differently. That’s the real question.” Pick grunted. “A question that news copter circling down is likely to ask.”
The what? Oh. Uh-oh. Small, painted bright blue, with an ACTION NEWS 10 logo on the side, dropping lower and lower.
“What is that?” Amarylis asked, voice carrying clearly.
An amplified voice came out of the copter, a woman’s, sounding shocked. “You can speak our language?”
Amarylis, now fully on the bridge, focused on the copter warily, tail swishing behind her. “Yes?”
The agents closest to Sandy started scrambling. “Oh, shit,” one said. He could see Brickman across the bridge, turning around and putting his hands to the side of his head.
Pick grinned, leaning against the car. “This should be fun.”