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computer happened to crash while Zambendorf was in the vicinity, or a security
alarm went off, or an automatic vendor malfunctioned, Clarissa would make sure
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that at least one headline to the effect of zambendorf accidentally wipes
memchip halts city bank would appear the next morning.
Not a week went by without a showing of Zambendorf performing at a celebrity
dinner, a Zambendorf stunt on a previous night's talk show, or, if Zambendorf
hadn't done anything newsworthy that particular week, a recycled account of
how an expert of this kind or that kind had "acknowledged the reality of the
Zambendorf effect" when denying one of the popular claims or had been "unable
to offer an answer" in the event of ignoring it.
Clarissa was middle-aged, short, and matronly, with dark hair cut in a
straight fringe across her forehead, her eyes framed by heavy-rimmed butterfly
glasses and her mouth accentuated by deep red lipstick that she continued to
use in Genoa Base's unlikely environment. Her chief weapons for getting what
she wanted were scorn and provocation: either goading people that they didn't
have the ability to deliver, or exasperating them to the point where they
would agree to virtually anything to be left in peace.
And over the years it had proved a fearsomely effective formula.
Sergeant Bill Harvey, one of the Special Forces detail left as part of the
military contingent at
Genoa Base, knew her well enough by now and grinned as she waved a hand
disparagingly from the chair on the far side of the steel desk in the
guardroom of the main perimeter gatehouse.
"Why 'Great' Britain?" she demanded. "What's so great about it? We put them in
their place over two hundred years ago." Harvey had spent a year attached to
the British counterterrorist Special Air
Service regiment, and the conversation had drifted into matters concerning the
mother country.
"You don't understand, Clarissa," Harvey said. "That was intentional. They
shipped all their crazies that they could do without over to us, cut the
connection, and left us stuck with them. Then they went out and took over the
world and had a great time."
"Says who?"
Harvey eyed her curiously across the desk for a few seconds, then relented.
"Not really. It has to do with their geography."
"Their geography?" Clarissa repeated. " 'Great'?" She gave him a fish-eyed
look through her butterfly glasses. "What are you talking about? You could get
the whole of it into one corner of Texas."
"Sure could. It'd do wonders for the place, too."
"So what's great about it?" Clarissa asked again.
"It's like greater New York. England and Wales were originally Britain, see.
Then, when they added Scotland, it became Great Britain."
The huge black man in a white T-shirt and khaki drill pants who was leaning
against the wall by the arms rack nodded. He was Joe Fellburg, Zambendorf's
security man. "There's another part as well, right? That piece up at the top
of Ireland."
"Northern Ireland," Harvey said, nodding. "That gives you the United Kingdom.
Then, if you add the rest of Ireland, that's the British Isles. It's all very
simple, really." As duty officer of the watch, he was kitted out in an EV suit
minus helmet and pack, which were stowed in the locker next to the
outside-access chamber door. Two French paratroopers were smoking and talking
over mugs of coffee at a table in the rear, by the door leading to the
interior of the base.
"Do you know, Drew was talking about this the other day, and he got it all
wrong," Clarissa said.
She pulled a pad toward her that was lying on Harvey's desk. It was a
standard-issue NASO pad, with pages ruled and numbered and the NASO emblem
printed at the top of each. "I wanna write this down.
Is it okay if I use this?"
Harvey shrugged and waved a hand. "Sure. Go ahead."
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Clarissa uncapped a pen. "I want to make sure I've got it right. Now, how did
all that go again?"
People soon learned that nothing concerning Zambendorf was ever quite what it
seemed. This was particularly true of the strange mixture of individuals who
had attached themselves to him in the course of time, almost as if the
unconventionality of the world he moved in somehow catered to a need for
zaniness that their former lifestyles had been incapable of satisfying.
Clarissa had been not just a pilot but a combat instructor with the Air
Force's suborbital bomb wing. Fellburg had worked in earlier years as a
communications specialist in industry and later with military intelligence but
had come to the conclusion that there was more money to be made along with
more prestige and social recognition to be enjoyed
from the magical vibrations of psychic fields than from the electrical
modulations of real ones. He had missed some aspects of the life nevertheless,
and he enjoyed having military people around him again at
Genoa Base.
So, naturally, there was more to their just happening to be in the guardhouse
at this particular time than mere socializing or taking an idle moment to
relive former camaraderie. The scientists who had witnessed Zambendorf's
"projection" to Gerry Massey aboard the
Orion several days before had been discussing the feat ever since, and
Zambendorf's guess was that they were close to figuring out how he and Massey
had done it. In fact, about half an hour before, Thelma, the team's blond,
glamorous, curvaceous, and leggy secretary who also had a Ph.D. in
mathematical physics had called
Zambendorf to warn him that a group of them were in the general messroom and
had been asking where he was in order to confront him with their conclusions.
One of Zambendorf's strengths lay in never letting an opportunity go by. Far
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