I didn't have kids. Not that I didn't want them-- I was only 31, there was plenty of time. But at the time that I led my first mission, I did not have kids. Nor did I have any younger siblings or, in fact, any siblings at all. But by the time Gillian and Greg became Grillian, I was beginning to imagine what it must have been like. It's all about lying, but lying in a very specific and reassuring way. Trying to make everybody think that everything is absolutely fine and it's all happened before, nothing to worry about, when this is not, in fact, the case. Inside, you're panicking. But outside, you can't show it. You don't want to scare the kids.
I was not very good at it. You have to be a certain amount of good at it to be a recruiter and to lead a mission, but this was just one thing too many. Inside, I was starting to lose it, and I could tell by the increasing tension in the air and the looks on the recruits' faces that it was starting to show on the outside. The implications of this regarding my potential abilities as a parent were something I would peruse later, in the peaceful solitude of my own apartment. There was no time for that as I grabbed Virgil by the lapel and hauled him up to the flight deck. Virgil and I were going to have
words.
Once away from the eyes of the kids, I flung Virgil from me as hard as I could, shoving him into the wall, in fact. That, I think, wiped that smug grin off his face for the first time since the mission had begun.
Not wanting the kids to hear, I tried very hard not to scream. I'm not sure how successful I was on that front.
"What did you do?" The smug smile quickly back in place, Virgil only shrugged. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, yes you do! You know you did something and it was something big and it was something bad and I want to know what it was so that I can
fix it!"
"My goodness, somebody's unhappy. Sexually frustrated, are we?"
I wish that I could say I had a witty comeback ready, but my jaw simply dropped in absolute shock. My eventual response was more a sound than actual words, which seemed to amuse Virgil greatly. He started to take advantage of the situation by sidling past me toward the exit, but I stopped him. The fortuitous thing was that his words had had the same effect as a slap across the face, and I was now feeling much more calm, though still seething. So when I asked him again, it was a very quiet growl.
"
What did you
do? This is not the time to mess around, Virgil. I'm not stupid, you know I'm not stupid, and I am in no mood for games."
Virgil nodded his acknowledgement. "Okay," he said. "I don't know."
I blinked. "Excuse me?"
"I don't know what I did. I was trying to get us out of the doom perp."
"How did you know--"
"Not important. The facts are that I was trying to get us out of the doom perp before we entered it, and I'm not sure what exactly happened."
"I can
tell you what exactly happened! Two of my recruits are now one of my recruits, that's what
happened! And you and I both know that only happens when a jump is made mid-transition!"
"Not necessarily. That's just the only time we've
known it to happen up until now." He still hadn't wiped that idiotic smile off his face. I was severely tempted to do it for him, but suddenly all of my energy drained away into exhaustion.
"You bastard. You jumped us mid-perp, Virgil."
"Apparently."
"This is bad.
So bad. Do you have any idea how bad this is?"
"Actually," Virgil countered, "no. That hinges on a very important question. Do you have any idea which perp this is?"
At first the implications of this question failed to hit me. "No. Which one did you jump to?"
"I don't know. I was just hitting things at random. God, Ellen, I didn't want to die in the doom perp."
So. Bad.I stared at him. I stared at him in open disbelief. "There are no words, Virgil."
"How about 'oh, shit?'" For the first time, I looked past the stupid smile and managed to see that Virgil looked a little freaked out. It was in his eyes. Actually, Virgil seemed to have the comforting-lie part of parenting down. He'd fooled me, a grown woman who knew everything he knew and
knew that he knew it, into thinking that he was calm for a good ten minutes. I silently added the disturbing idea that Virgil might be a better potential parent than myself onto my list of things to mull over later.
"I still don't trust you. But you're going to help me fix this," I told him. "You are going to help me fix this
now, because you did it, and I need my recruits back."
Virgil looked taken aback. "Oh, surely you can get along without them for a little while? In an unstable environment? You ought to at least figure out where we are and whether they could possibly be of any use-"
I cut him off. "Do you want to end this mission as dead as you were presumed to be before it started? Because I can see to that. This is
my mission. And I need Greg!"
I knew that was a mistake as soon as it left my mouth. Virgil raised an eyebrow. "So we are sexually frustrated, then?"
I was not even going to dignify that with a response.
