It was a fine day for Paris in January. The sun had not yet declared the morning open for business, but the sky to the east was already brightening slightly as Josh and Becki descended the stairs to the riverbank. Boatmen and fishermen were beginning their daily routines even in the faint light, but the walks were as yet empty of those whose business there was mere enjoyment.
Terra Group's business there was anything but. Nevertheless, the two agents patrolling the Rive Gauche were finding enjoyment nearer than usual to hand.
"I still can't believe you haven't seen any of the Indiana Jones movies," Josh said, looking over and more than a foot down at his companion. He'd never quite realized how much shorter Becki was until now. But seeing the bright smile she turned up at him, she didn't seem so short after all. "I mean, you're from Indiana!"
"Yeah, so?" she laughed. "If it were a movie about basketball, maybe being a Hoosier would have something to do with it, but . . ."
"You need to get out more," he teased.
"Sure. Especially on days like this. Look." She nodded toward the stillness of the river. "It's so beautiful, in this early light."
Though he was watching less the river than his companion, Josh conceded the point with a slight nod. "Paris is a beautiful city."
"So it is. And as charming a city as I've ever seen. I could get used to this."
"I wouldn't mind living here." He shivered slightly--though the sun was beginning to rise now, it still offered little in the way of warmth--and added, "Though for a visit, the summer months have more to recommend them."
Becki nodded. "I always wanted to see Paris, as long as I've been studying French. Thought about doing a study-abroad term, but I could never find a semester free enough to go. It's taking me five years to graduate instead of four, as it is." She chuckled and looked over at her companion. "In five years' time I never managed to come here on my own; then suddenly a mission comes up and in a matter of days I'm here for Terra Group."
"Well, there's the benefits of Terra Group membership for you. Join the team, see the world, blow up interesting places!"
Becki giggled at this and then pointed toward the river. "There's one. I can't read the name on it, can you?"
When it was confirmed that neither of them could quite make it out, they wandered a bit nearer the bank, taking care not to look as if they had any special interest in the craft, a run-down old houseboat. Their efforts proved superfluous. It was not the Alba Varden. With a sigh and a shrug they moved on.
"You know," Josh said as they resumed their walk, "I'll miss this place."
"Well, we're not quite ready to leave it yet," Becki reminded him.
"Yeah, but what do we still have to do here? If all goes well today we might win a round in the hunt for the shield; but if the Alba Varden is only carrying a part of it, we've still got other parts to find. And it looks as if those other parts are moving toward the mid-east, so that's where we've got to move, too. All that's left for us to do in Paris is finding Cheriss--and I'm about ready to give up on that. If we haven't found any better leads on her by now, we're never going to."
"Maybe she's moved on to the middle East, too," Becki said hopefully. "I hate to give up on her entirely."
"Well, if NRI sent her here by herself, presumably she can take care of herself a little longer."
"I suppose." They paused a second to inspect another boat, this one without any name painted anywhere visible.
"Closer look," Josh whispered. "Follow my lead."
He led her to the end of the pier where the boat was docked, right up to the edge, and there he hollered down towards the ill-kept craft: "Hé! Monsieur!"
A sound like grumbling came from the belly of the boat; Josh hollered again. Upon his third call, a face showed itself at the cabin door: A most un-Monsieur-like face. A woman, square-faced, broad-shouldered, and wide-hipped, even more unkempt--and much more formidable--than the boat itself, glared out at the two agents, bellowing "Que voulez-vous?[1]" in a voice best suited for reminding some recalcitrant rooster to be about his morning's business, as the sun steadily rose over the agents' shoulders.
"Euh," Josh fumbled, "<We wondered if-- Could we speak to the captain?>"
"<I'm the captain,>" she growled in return. Of course.
"<We're looking for a boat,>" Becki stepped in.
"<Oh?>" the captain smirked. "<And just what do you call this?>" She gestured to indicate her fine piece of navality[2], taking in the faded and chipped paint, the sagging railings, the bare patches in roofs and decks, the rusty patches wherever rust might reasonably take purchase.
It was far too good an opening for a joke. Becki prudently ignored it. "<Yes, but a particular boat, you see. We're looking for the Alba-->" she likewise ignored Josh's sudden look of alarm-- "<Longa. Like with Romulus and Remus, you know. This wouldn't happen to be it, I don't suppose?>"
"Non," said the captain, "il s'appelle le Passeur d'Aurore.[3]" She said this with a tone of pride remarkable for the owner of such a wreck, but that was not sufficient to explain Becki's sudden look of distress. She thanked the woman, muttered excuses, and hurried away. Josh likewise--deciding it was safest to be as polite as possible--thanked the captain, then followed his teammate.
"Alba Longa," he scoffed quietly. "If it had been the Alba Varden, and you go around dropping next-best names like that--"
"Passeur d'Aurore," Becki groaned, ignoring him.
"What?"
"She named that thing after the Dawn Treader!"
"The who?"
"As in The Voyage of." She sighed and looked away. "You haven't read it, I suppose."
"Well, is there a movie?" he teased. Becki looked back around, staring at him with a look of uncertain humor, such as implied she was halfway between laughing and lecturing.
Apparently neither won out; after a few seconds she sighed and said, "Actually, I think there was. Or maybe they only made movies through Prince Caspian? But Treader was only the third book, so I think there was a movie."
"Well, I didn't see it, and I still have no idea what--"
"Dawn Treader's a boat," she explained. "Nothing like that Passeur d'Aurore, though. It was a boat on which a prince become king sailed East, toward the Sun's rising, Aslan's own country, to find seven lost lords. . . ." Her voice trailed away dreamily with memories of the story. "My favorite book when I was a kid," she said finally. "I used to wish I was Lucy and in love with Prince Caspian. Which didn't quite work since he ended up marrying the Star's Daughter, but whatever." She grinned and looked up at him. "And then there was Reepicheep, and Eustace undragoned, and the Last Sea. . . . Oh, were I half the storyteller Lewis was--"
"If you were," Josh teased, "I'd have actually understood all that just now."
"Oh, never mind." She turned and walked on ahead of him, watching the river again.
He caught up to her as the shore path suddenly started to angle away from the river, putting the agents farther from the boats they were trying to spot. This made for slower going, especially as it coincided with a fairly large group of boats docked near together, and one or two unmoored as well, already about their daily business on the waters of the Seine. The agents took their time, making sure each boat was not the Alba Varden before moving on.
"I just hope they aren't sailing under an assumed name or anything," Josh muttered after a while. "This whole search could be pointless if they don't have 'Alba Varden' conveniently painted up on the prow."
"If they are under an assumed name," Becki suggested, "maybe 'Alba Varden' is it, actually. Maybe that's why the man at the warehouse had the name written down--it was how he was to identify the carrier."
"There are too many ifs in this mission," Josh shook his head.
"Aren't there always?"
The path continued to meander just a bit too far from the river for the agents' liking, but all of a sudden a low wall appeared, not more than a couple of feet high, running alongside the path, between it and the shore. Becki absently reached out and dragged a hand along the top of this wall as they walked, keeping their attention firmly fixed on the boats while trying not to look like they were paying more attention to them than any typical couple out for a morning stroll would.
It was boring work: The boats soon took to looking all alike--if not literally, at least in the agents' minds, seared with repetition, they did. And one plain, typical boat only led to another. They grew tired of the process. Soon, though their eyes were still on the names painted on the vessels, their conversation had veered off in a dozen different directions: each as far away as possible from boats upon water.
Eventually it came back in a direction upon which it had ventured once already in the course of the morning, and frequently enough in the days prior. "Cheriss must be long gone from Paris by now anyway," Josh was saying. "She's still hunting the shield, after all. No doubt she'll turn up wherever it is when we finally find it. Maybe we'll even beat her to it, but I bet she won't be far behind!"
"I wonder where we'll finally find it," Becki mused, pressing up against the wall for a closer--barely--look at one of the boats given to infuriatingly small print of its name.
"Somewhere in the middle East, apparently," Josh shrugged. "Maybe buried in the middle of the desert, in keeping with Sci's codename for this mission."
"Where exactly, though? Where do we start? There's that coin Mike found--does that lead us to Israel? Then, too, remember from Sci's briefing at the start of all this, Cheriss had identified Iraqi agents dealing with the Imperials selling the shield. Or maybe we're all wrong about the middle East, and the shield will be in Russia with those guys you beat up two days ago."
"Could be. Well, with any luck we'll find something on the Alba Varden pointing us in the right direction."
"Personally, I'm betting on Mike's coin," Becki grinned. "I want to see Jerusalem again."
"Jerusalem! What's in Jerusalem?"
First she favored him with her best I'm-shocked-you-should-say-such-a-thing look. Then, as they continued their patrol of the Left Bank, sparing just enough of their attention to ID each of the boats they passed, Josh found himself subjected to a brief (relatively speaking) impromptu lecture on the wonders and delights of the war-beset City of Peace, where once two years ago Becki had visited: the kind of place that you may leave but which never leaves you. "Even more so than Paris," she concluded. "Oh, Paris!" Josh nodded, understanding more of her attitude toward Jerusalem from that comparison than from any of the rest of her rhetoric. They both knew about Paris.
A silence fell as they focused again on boat-watching. Josh squinted to make out the name on one quiet-seeming craft, then looked back to his partner again only to find that she'd hopped up atop the wall while he wasn't looking.
"Now what are you doing?" he demanded.
"I'm taller than you now," she grinned down at him.
He shook his head and rolled his eyes, a dismissive gesture, and walked on beside the wall. She kept up; the wall was wide here and not a difficult path to walk. "Actually," she explained, "I can see the river better from up here, too."
"Oh, good. Now you'll actually be of some use!"
Becki answered that with a grin that matched his in a way to imply that she recognized the tease for what it was and refused to stoop to the level of answering in kind. She stooped further instead. "Anyway I get to see things from your perspective this way; that should be fun. Goodness, I think the air's clearer up here. Is it always so--" She broke off with a half-yelp as the wall narrowed and she nearly lost her footing, tottering precariously for a moment so that Josh instinctively reached out to grab her. No need; she'd already regained her balance.
"You were saying?" he scolded in answer to her sudden shamefaced smile and blush when she started walking again.
"I was saying, Oops. Gotta watch the uneven spots here."
"Maybe you'd better come down."
"I'm okay." By way of proving it, she set her shoulders back, placing each foot neatly in front of the other as carefully as any tightrope walker but as nonchalantly as a girl trying to live down her earlier foolishness without bringing on more of the same sort, and walked along quietly looking out to the river again. Unconvinced, Josh kept one eye on the boats and the other on her.
The conversation soon resumed at the last serious point it had left off. "It would be nice to see Jerusalem again," Becki mused.
"I get the impression," Josh said, "that as mission leader I'm being lobbied here to interpret the evidence in a way that suits one of my teammates' personal preferences."
Becki laughed and looked down at him, carefully to avoid falling again. "Is it working, then?"
"Why would the shield be in Jerusalem?"
"Why wouldn't it? Anyway, we have to start somewhere."
"I'm still hoping for a better lead before we head to the mid-east."
"Right. Okay." She started to stumble again, but he steadied her with a hand at her elbow and the crisis passed almost unmarked. Nodding her thanks, she continued. "I suppose it probably isn't in Jerusalem; that's just my wishful thinking."
"Well, we do have some leads pointing to Israel."
"Of no greater significance than those that point elsewhere. It's too much to ask," she grinned, "for a vacation in both Paris and Jerusalem, all thanks to Terra Group."
"You call this a vacation?" he asked, feigning shock.
"Compared to student teaching--yes!" she laughed.
"Oh right. Dodging blaster bolts, escaping from bombed apartments, cataloguing every boat on the Seine . . ."
"Sure beats grading essays and handing out detentions!" she finished.
"Yes, Terra Group's a blast!"
"Literally!"
"Sometimes, yes." After a pause, Josh settled into a more serious mood. "Not a bad job, though, when you think about it. Good people to work with, even if we do have our differences; interesting assignments--"
"With emphasis on the 'interesting' of course."
"--being in on something no one on the planet knows about but us. It may have been a pretty rough path that brought me to this group, but you know what, I don't regret it."
"Even when it means you can't go home again?" she asked quietly.
"Sure, that's hard. I'd like to be able to see my family again, but there's not much chance of it. But still, given how much I hated my life before, I think it's a pretty even trade." He glanced up at her; she was navigating the wall now with ease. "What about you? Glad you're in on this, or not?"
"Oh, sure," she said. "It's grown way past what I expected when I first agreed to host a few Wraiths back in Terre Haute, but I can't complain. Though there are certainly times I feel a bit in over my head--it's such a long, long way from Terre Haute now. Even when I'm not in Paris. Or Jerusalem." Or Mendellia--that went unsaid, though the thought hung over them there, practically hovering tangible in the air before them.
Maybe it was that on which Becki then tripped. Whatever served to disturb her balance, one moment she was walking along beside Josh and the next she was barely balancing on one leg atop the narrowing wall, first swaying back, then seeming to right herself, then suddenly tumbling forward toward him again. Again, instinctively, he reached to catch her, just in time, as she landed neatly in his arms before he could even think to slow her fall with the Force as he'd done days before when she had to trust him and leap.
She looked up to thank him and her gaze locked with his. They stood like that for a long moment, her leaning comfortably against him, him with his arms protectively around her. Later she would recall that she'd intended to thank him, but at that moment all she could think to offer was a warm smile. Then something changed in his expression. He looked away for a second, a look of fear passing over his face. He turned back to her again, and before she could question what she'd seen, he leaned down and kissed her.
The kiss began very softly, almost teasing in its tentativity. After a moment's hesitation Becki joined in the kiss, returning it with the same enthusiasm with which it was given. Its tender warmth built steadily as the kiss washed over them and carried them further and further. Soon they were fully submerged in its power, its depth and its passion engulfing them. Far from resisting, they both relaxed into it and allowed themselves to be swept along in it. The Seine, silent witness, flowed on in its course, and life flowed on around the two of them, but they stood oblivious to all but each other.
On the river's other bank, Thayer stood frozen, his heart slowly fracturing into a myriad irreparable shards.