Excerpt # 2: The Spy I Loved. Dusty Miller.

Photo by Mom, (Wiki.)

(Editor's Note: This stuff will be edited. -- ed.)





Dusty Miller

Liam pulled up to the shoreline where a portage trail led up into a tall forest of pines and black spruce, a pink and grey outcropping of bald granite looming above that on a high angle.

“Hullo.”

“Good morning.”

Ian Spencer held the boat as Liam got out. Ian was another lone wolf.

“So you think you’ve found the damned thing?” Spencer snorted softly. “Or part of it. I guess that’s why they’re paying you the big bucks, eh?”

Ian was as Canadian as apple pie and Blue Jays baseball. He was lucky to be getting five hundred a day plus expenses. Holding dual citizenship, he’d worked in Britain for many years in what was euphemistically called private security. During the real IRA years, some of those people were as tough and skilled at counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence as anyone else.

Ian’s resume was extensive.

Liam liked him well enough and he seemed tough, capable and confident.

“I’ve got a major part of her. Almost a certainty.” His morning briefing had said (essentially) that it looked good according to analysis and why not bring it up.

The radioactivity count indicated possibly the motors, or at least some part of the reactor. Brief exposure would give an increased chance of cancer later in life. The suit would only partially shield him. Getting it out of the mud would take some work.

It was the price one paid for an interesting life.

Ian went back into the bushes and dragged the first of two long duffel bags out onto the bank. Liam stowed the first one in the bottom of his boat, well out of sight as Spencer went back for the other one.

He came out of the woods, gasping and cursing.

“Jesus. I sure hope this is worth it to you.” He cleared his throat and held out a hand, palm up. “What, no tip?”

Liam just nodded and helped him get it aboard. Ian gave a sour grin and bent to it.

Kimball looked up.

“I’ve asked you to stop calling me that.” The tone was absent.

Ian shook his head.

There was another boat, a mile ahead of them up the river, and Liam wanted to get this done. There was a bend in the river and some overhanging branches, but with the powerful motors on the bass boats in particular, they could be on them in a minute, a minute and a half at best.

Ian stepped back as Liam dropped the second bag and shoved it with a good kick into the centerline. 

He had one foot in still in the water. He hopped into the boat with alacrity and Ian shoved the prow off the beach as he reached for the steering wheel and starter button.

Ian had undergone a long hike, portaging back and forth, to bring in all of the equipment. He was looking at another long walk back to his Land Rover. Shorthanded as they were, his partner was home watching the watchers.

Hopefully Liam could pull this off, while the opposition was presumably in disarray.

Ian began walking up the steep trail with barely a look back, almost enjoying himself now that the hard work was done. Sooner or later it would all have to come out again, of course.

There were places he needed to be. The sound of Kimball’s motor droned and faded and he took one last look back, seeing nothing but a patch of blue and a sea of treetops.

Almost anything could happen next. If he didn’t pay attention, he’d walk smack-dab into a mother black bear with a couple of cubs, or, what was almost worse—a big mess of poison ivy.

He’d had it once as a Boy Scout, and it was an experience he would never forget. People got it on their hands and sooner or later you had to pee.

Blackflies, mosquitoes and other biting insects buzzed and whirred and clouded his vision. Once off the lake, or off the trail or away from your camp, you just couldn’t get enough bug spray sometimes. 

With ankle length boots, high socks, and sticking to the trails, he’d been lucky to avoid poison ivy. 

There were also poison sumac and poison oak to contend with, although he’d never been able to tell the difference. Sumacs and oaks all looked the same to him, and poison ivy was one of those variable plants. You never quite knew what you were looking at. With the temperature near thirty Celsius, and with the humidity climbing, he’d failed to bring enough water. His canteen was almost dry.

The trail just went up and up and then up again some more.

His vehicle was a good thirty-five hundred metres from the water. He’d practically busted a nut getting Liam’s gear to him. His lower legs, back and shoulders just ached. When he finally rounded the last corner, he paled to see what someone had done to his vehicle. He stopped dead, jaw open. 

Every light, signal, and sheet of glass had been smashed. Every panel had been kicked in and dented, scratched, scraped and gouged…the mirrors had been kicked off as well. The license plate was missing from the front end.

“Shit.” Reaching for his phone, he checked his watch and then took a quick look up at the sun, wondering how far Liam might have gotten in the interval.

That movement saved his life. A rotten branch, blue-grey with lichens, exploded inches from his left ear and it became apparent that someone was shooting at him with a silenced weapon.

Birds twitted and cheeped as he froze in shock for a split second.

Smack.

Jesus, I’m lucky to still be alive—

With no idea of where the shots were coming from, it was all he could do to pick a direction and fling himself into the nearest underbrush, clawing at his own little gun.

Smack-smack-smack…no more.

Since he still had the time to wonder if the phone was smashed, it would seem he was still alive.

He was really sweating, now.

It did kind of put the mosquitoes in perspective, though. The nearest help was an hour away. To talk on the phone was to give away his position, to try and text a message was to lose that all-important focus.

Whoever was out there couldn’t see him at this exact moment. The shots had come from off to the right, and the trail, the logging road, led straight ahead.

It looked like a ticklish tactical picture, with the number of enemy combatants unknown, at least to the inexperienced eye.

His next move was obvious enough. At least to him. Ian drew his weapon and began wriggling towards whoever was out there.

The key was stealth and self-control.

The thing was to see the other guy first.

One shot, one kill, asshole.

(End of excerpt.) 

Excerpt # 1:  http://hotboox.blogspot.ca/2015/02/the-spy-i-loved-dusty-miller.html

Woman: Programmed.

Programmed.

Dusty Miller

Much of what we think of when we think of gender is superficial. Girls have long hair and boys have short hair. Men wear pants and women wear skirts. It is only seen as a cultural choice, a social evolution over time, when viewed from afar—like from a country where the dress code is much different.

We tend to think of social and sexual roles as natural. Even the trappings are seen as natural.

What they are, is socially-accepted.

Anthropologists describe a sexual contract, a division of labour between the sexes, the rise of language and the nuclear family. Much history has passed, from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age to the age of iron and steam.

Skipping over all of that brings us to the modern family. When little kids are growing up, Christmas is a big thing, perhaps the biggest thing of all. Kids are taught their social roles from a very early age.

The little boy gets a little blue hammer, a building set. The little girl gets a pink dolly.

The little boy gets a plastic jet airplane. The little girl gets a toy stove, one that bakes a little cake and everything.

The messages received are not just about gender, they are about social role.

Little boys will tell little girls, “You can’t play with jet planes.”

The little girl asks why and they tell them, “Because you are a girl.”

They’re not very old when they figure this out.

They even know enough not to ask for the wrong gender orientation of toy—a little boy so rarely asks for a dolly, and the little girls so seldom ask for jet airplanes or tool sets.

At first, the little girl doesn’t have a problem with her new tea set. After all, she can now bake a cake and sit with kitty and her dollies, and they can all have a nice little tea party.

There is always this jealousy between siblings, isn’t there? And little Johnny better respect that tea set, or that little oven, or there will be hell to pay.

That’s hers.

And that other stuff is his.

It is only when the little girl sees the little boy with his jet airplane that she even perceives that such a thing exists. She hasn’t been exposed to too much of that so far.

Because it is new, she wants to play with it. That part is truly instinctive, and a kitten or puppy will do the same thing for the same reasons. They are exploring their environment. They are exploring the possibilities and the hazards of their environment.

When a little girl gets a dolly, and everyone is making a fuss over her, and her brother is strafing the cat or something with his new jet airplane, and then the dolly pees on her, (Wow! Isn't that great?) she gets a certain message.

“Mommy. It peed on me.”

“That’s a good girl. Better get used to it…”

Yeah. Learn how to feed it and care for it and bathe it and comb its hair and dress it...the list goes on.

Much of woman’s role is imposed by biology and evolution. The rest is imposed by culture, tradition, and the passage of time itself. Much of what we think a woman is and should be is programmed. 

Cultural programming stems right from birth.

It is imposed by the needs and prejudices of the day, but that isn’t necessarily to say that it is carved in stone or forever unchangeable.

Of all the animal kingdom, homo sapiens exhibits the greatest differentiation within species of any creature. All deer look alike, with very little in the way of individual characteristics. They rely on smell and not appearance to identify one another, sound as well. We know our parent’s voice and so do they.

The same becomes even more true the further one goes down the evolutionary ladder. Adult humans are big, small, dark and fair, heavy and light, ranging in skin colour and facial and cranial features that would be remarkable in salmon or mice or snakes. There may be deformed ants, but ones with big noses and no chins, or fat ones working alongside skinny ones would be remarkable. What is remarkable is their sameness—not the other way around.

Many other creatures exhibit social characteristics, humans have developed it to a remarkable degree.

It is for social reasons that we have seen the evolution of so many cultural modes.

And variety, as they say, is the spice of life.

It is also the spice, and arguably, the goal or end result of evolution.

END

Sexual and Other Imprinting.

 

The Spy I Loved. Dusty Miller.

Dusty Miller


(The following is an excerpt from a work in progress. -- ed.)

It was Sunday night, about ten p.m. At this time of year, full darkness came late. When Lindsey stepped out of the store, finally, after a very long day, her body vibrated in physical and emotional exhaustion.

She shivered in the sudden chill, but when she tipped her head back under the wan light of a half a dozen sodium bulbs on their tall standards, her jaw dropped.

The sky was ablaze with colour. 

“Oh!” She looked around, but there was no one there.

That was always the way, wasn’t it?

It was just her and the crickets.

She stood hugging herself for warmth.

No one there.

Off to her right, voices and the snapping of the flames came from a dozen different campfires scattered up and down the hill. People partied, drank, talked or just stared mindlessly into the flames. 

Their bonfires, rarely small, were a source of endless fascination to young and old alike. Blinded by their own interest, they couldn't look up. People dreamt by the fires, she being reminded of something Dale had once said. The old guy could be profound enough when he wanted to be. It just took a couple of stiff ones.

The trouble was, that this was the here and the now, this was not a story—and she had no one to share it with. This was an experience, perhaps even a potentially mystical one. If only the right person were there.

With her heart sinking a little, she lowered her eyes and turned her head. She could always go up and party. Sit by the fire and talk. She’d be welcome pretty much everywhere. With someone or other. 

They were all pretty nice folks…guests, really.

Cabin Seven, the vagaries of fate and the course of development being what they were, wasn’t too far off. It was the second one in on the beach side of the road. The lights were still on inside, and just as the thought came, she saw his head and shoulders in the kitchen window. He was face-down slightly, probably washing up at the kitchen sink.

She bit her lip.

The aurora borealis didn’t often come in summer, and the display, stretching from horizon to horizon, was totally spectacular.

She had nothing to lose.

With the resolve to at least give it a try, she put her head down. Marching up the gravel road, around the corner and onto his front porch, she raised her hand. Looking right and left, her uncle Dale or Mark were nowhere in sight. This was a good thing, although one or two guests were visible strolling along on their little road, they didn’t matter nearly so much.

Taking a breath, Lindsey thought of her first line, and then gave a couple of gentle raps.

“Frank? Can I call you back later?” His words came, dimly caught through the thin walls of the cabin.

She could hear Liam moving around in there. He most likely took a quick look through the peephole. 

The front light came on above her. The latch snapped and then her eyes were flooded with warm amber light and he was right there.

He wore the earpiece and the thin extension microphone of a hands-off telephone system. It occurred to her that he might have been working. She had no real idea of what he did for a living.

After all…they barely knew each other.

Like the proper fool she was, in spite of some initial planning, she blurted out the first thing that came into her head.

“What’s that wonderful smell?”

Liam Kimball grinned. Shirtless, his hair was slightly disheveled and he was barefoot. His hand came up and he pushed his hair down, somewhat at least. There were one or two tufts still running rampant.

He didn’t often have this kind of effect on women, but it was something she had been unable to hide. 

Crikey, she couldn’t have been a day over eighteen or nineteen. It was making him feel distinctly old, possibly even grubby. Maybe even a little bit dirty.

All of this at the age of twenty-seven.

All of this before he’d even really had a drink.

With this one, you were sort of cautious about taking a real good look at her.

“Ah. What a wonderful question. I admire enthusiasm, incidentally.” Reaching out, he took her hand.

Liam Kimball pulled a slightly-bemused and unresisting Lindsey into his comfortable, albeit temporary new lair. He closed the door behind her, trying not to over-linger on her protuberant nipples or the pert belly-button revealed below her cut-off, hot pink tank top.

Lindsey had very nice shoulders, he observed.

“I’m glad you asked that. It’s my own concoction. Not three, not four, nor even five peppercorns. Mine is what I call six peppercorn gravy…”

He wasn’t kidding either.

“Man does not live by fish alone.” He’d done something with beef, judging by the lingering aroma.

She stood there with an odd look on her face as he beamed paternally, face a little flushed. She caught the smell of alcohol. It was discernable although he was far from out of control. A man like Liam would rarely be out of control, she thought, chin up and looking on that cautiously optimistic male face.

She couldn’t help but look around.

Her eyes widened slightly, then she did her best to ignore a small automatic pistol on the kitchen table, in the middle of being stripped down to its constituent parts for cleaning and re-oiling…she closed her mouth firmly. There was a computer, screen glowing blue, and various bits of electronic equipment, of a kind she wasn’t immediately familiar with but it might have been a fish-finder…??? 

There was something forbidding about the black glass eye on the front end of it. The side was open, and it was trailing coloured cables and wires all over the table top.

This was probably a good time to mention the northern lights.

Her mouth was opening to speak.

He turned around to head for the kitchen and that’s when she saw the scar.

(End of excerpt.)

Anyways, we hope to have our first novel done by the middle of March...knock on wood.