Page 8 of Consumed
“Good morning, son. Have you eaten breakfast?”
“Yes, sir,” Con lied. He’d been too nervous.
Townsend gestured at one of the low chairs in front of his desk. “Well, have a seat.”
Con complied, leaning his cane against the armrest. He watched while the chief ate, drank amber liquid from a glass tumbler, and smoked. Con tried to distract himself by gazing at the yellowed newspaper articles hanging on the wall, but they were too far away to discern anything but the headlines. And anyway, he’d read them before.
Eventually Con couldn’t stand it any longer. “Sir, you wanted to speak with me?”
“Indeed I do.” Townsend wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “But I’m waiting for someone else, and he’s predictably late.”
“Who?” Con shifted uneasily.
Instead of answering, Townsend pushed back from the desk and stood. He walked to the windows and spent a good ten minutes chain-smoking and looking out at the view, his back to Con. It was excruciating.
Several eternities later, the phone buzzed, startling Con. Townsend sailed over to the desk and picked up; he listened but didn’t say anything before hanging up and looking expectantly at the door.
It opened a moment later, and Agent Molina sauntered in.
Con’s stomach sank. Was this meeting about Molina’s mild heckling during the training sessions? Did Townsend think that Con wasn’t handling it appropriately? Or—good heavens—was this some attempt to get the two of them to shake hands and make nice?
Molina looked… rumpled. He often walked around HQ with his suit coat off and his tie loosened or missing entirely, but this morning his white shirt was wrinkled and his thick dark hair mussed. He clearly hadn’t shaved either. He looked surprised and not especially pleased to see Con.
“Good morning,” said the chief pleasantly. He waved at the empty chair. “Please join us.”
Molina collapsed into the chair gracelessly, mumbling something about traffic on the 101. Townsend remained silent for a while after that, and Con found it satisfying to watch Molina fidget like a boy called into the principal’s office. Con himself sat as straight and still as he could manage, even if it made his legs ache.
“Look,” Molina said finally, not meeting their eyes. “I’m sorry I was an asshole during yesterday’s training, okay? Although it wasn’t a big deal. The Phantom didn’t have to be a douche and rat me out.”
“I didn’t—”
“Stop.” Townsend interrupted Con’s indignant self-defense. “Agent Becker didn’t complain about your behavior. And although your behavior was hardly exemplary, it wasn’t egregious enough to deserve a dressing down.”
“Oh.” Molina shrank back in his seat.
Con relaxed a little too. “Then why are we here?”
“Because I have a mission for the two of you.”
Momentarily united in bafflement, Con and Molina exchanged a look. Clearly neither of them could picture Molina being of much help in the Antarctic, and Con wasn’t going to be much help anywhere else.
“Sir?” Con prompted.
“It’s like this, boys. For reasons not currently apparent to all, I find it necessary to forge alliances with… well, with whomever I can. Including sentients that may have a history of troubled relationships with humans. Which, frankly, is most of them.” He sighed heavily.
Molina looked as skeptical as Con felt. “Alliances?”
“Nothing formal.” Townsend leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach. “Eighty years ago there was a bloody struggle in Kentucky—coal miners and union organizers on one side, coal companies and police on the other. One woman watched the sheriff’s men tear her house apart, searching for her husband who was a union organizer. And that night she wrote a song—'Which Side Are You On?’ That’s what I need to know about sentient communities: which side are they on? Or to paraphrase our president, are they with us or are they against us?”
This explanation, such as it was, made Con uncomfortable. But it was Molina who spoke. “Who are we at war with, Chief?”
“Nobody. Yet. And honestly, I’ve oversimplified matters. Suffice it to say that in the future, I believe we will be in a position in which allies are critical. Right now, I want to do what I can to assess which partnership efforts are likely to bear fruit. The pair of you will help.”
Con and Molina both tried to speak at the same time, but Townsend held up his hands to shut them up. He pulled a bottle out of a desk drawer, refilled his whiskey glass, and downed it in one long draught. Con had tried liquor once, a few years earlier and more out of curiosity than anything else. His one small sip had burned all the way down, making him choke and gasp. He couldn’t imagine swallowing it like water.
“Here are the details, boys. Tomorrow morning the two of you will choose a company car and drive east to a small town in Arizona. You could probably make it in one day, but no need to hurry, and you might as well arrive refreshed. So feel free to stop for the night along the way. When you arrive, you’ll make contact with a group of local sentients. You’ll—well, negotiate isn’t quite the correct word—you’ll parley with them. Find out if they’re inclined to be sympathetic to our cause, and also what actions we might take to foster that sympathy. Then you’ll return here for a debriefing.”
Townsend looked smug, Con thought. Or at least self-satisfied.
