“Did you forget who you were calling, Doug? Or did you hit the wrong speed-dial button again?”
“Huh? What?”
“Never mind. What do you want, Doug? It’s late.”
“If you had any kind of social life the evening would just be starting.”
“You’re starting to sound like a nagging mother, Doug. What is it?”
“I’m doing you a favor here, sweetheart. You should thank me.”
“Maybe if I knew what it was.”
“Something’s come down from Corporate. Something hot.”
“You know what they say rolls downhill, Doug. It’s pretty hot sometimes, too.”
“Annja, just, like, listen for a change.” This from Doug, who had the attention span of one of those little midges that live for six hours. “This is actually a good idea. Not like those other ones. Have you ever heard of Mount Ararat?”
She suddenly teetered over to her sofa. The end nearer the door was stacked with archaeological journals and printouts of recently submitted papers. Her legs were suddenly so shaky she sat right on top of the foot-high pile.
“Yes. I’ve heard of Ararat.”
“So, like, it turns out Noah’s Ark is on top of the freaking mountain. Who knew?”
Anyone who watches our rival cable networks, for starters, she thought. “Doug, we don’t know it’s Noah’s Ark. For one thing, the mountain’s seventeen thousand feet high.”
“Really? That’s a lot of rain. Anyway, there’s an expedition headed up it. Nothing to worry about, it’s an American operation all the way, not run by any people from Madagascar or wherever. You’d be their pet archaeologist. You’d also have a team from the show along to shoot everything. Do you hear what I’m saying, here, Annja? You’re working for them and us. You’re double-dipping, all open and aboveboard.”
“Wow,” Annja said.
“Try to muster some excitement, here. Because wait, there’s more. If the suits decide to run with this you will be talent and producer for that episode. You, in person. Annja Creed.”
That actually penetrated her fog of dismay and incipient paranoia. “You’re kidding!” It meant that the show’s coverage might actually feature her real archaeology instead of the entertainment bits that usually won out.
“Not at all, kiddo. Not at all. Focus groups say America’s getting tired of the superficial. They want their infotainment shows to be more serious.”
“Do they, now?”
“So what do you say? Yes?”
“I say I’m tired, Doug. This is a lot to heap on my plate. Let me sleep on it, at least.”
“What’s to think about?”
“Plenty,” she said grimly. “Look, Doug. Thank you. I really, really appreciate that you’re looking out for me. But I need to think about it.”
“Don’t think about it too long, babe. You know network. It’s got the attention span of a hyperthyroid weasel.”
She broke the connection, in case he had any further blandishments to offer. He really did mean well, in his air-headed way.
Her shoulders slumped. She tossed the phone on the sofa and rubbed her face with her hands.
“Is something else going on here?” she said to the half-lit room. “Am I getting paranoid?”
And the little voice in her head answered, Is it paranoid when they really are out to get you?
ANNJA HEADED OUT OF the television studio building into warm autumn sunlight. Some dried leaves skittered along the steps.
It was a little after one. She had two full hours for lunch before she was due back for a script conference for Chasing History’s Monsters on star-children—hybrids between creatures from the stars, which was an old-time way of saying aliens, and men. Some people claimed they were spoken of in legends from all over the world. Annja was almost as skeptical of that claim as she was of the alien-human hybrid thing itself. She knew that her show was fluff but it paid well and allowed her to do a lot of real archaeology that she’d never have the time or money for otherwise. And now Doug was promising to let her shape an episode entirely her way. He’d been hounding her all morning to accept the Noah’s Ark expedition. It seemed Charlie Bostitch was throwing his weight and his money around and he really wanted Annja on his team.
Annja had no idea what she was going to do for lunch. But after a morning of Doug and his antics she just had to get away from the show and everything connected to it for a while. Even if she just walked aimlessly the whole time. Actually, even if she stood banging her forehead against the corner of a building.
Her phone rang. She pulled it from its carrier. The number was unfamiliar. She thumbed Answer anyway. What the hey? She was an adventuress, wasn’t she?
“Ms. Creed?” asked a man in a slightly Middle Eastern accent.
“Yes,” she said in a neutral tone. Irrationally she started flicking her eyes all around, studying the slow-moving tourist swarms and the busy locals bustling past them with their usual welcoming snarls and occasional shouted obscenities. If anyone was stalking her they probably wouldn’t need to resort to a trick like dialing her number and seeing who answered. But she also had a well-honed aversion to taking things for granted.
“I hope you will forgive me bothering you. This is Levi.”
“Levi?”
“Rabbi Leibowitz. I met you last night at dinner at the Penthouse.”
“Oh. Yes. Rabbi. How are you?” Politeness, her default mode, took over. Very few people, herself definitely included, thought of her as a Southerner, although to all practical purposes she was, having been raised in New Orleans. She was a New Yorker through and through. She was most particularly not a Southern belle. But the sisters at the orphanage had brought her up to be polite, and on the whole, she was pleased with that. Unlike a great many other elements of her upbringing.
“Oh, I’m fine, fine, Ms. Creed. And I’m terribly sorry if I or my associates offended you last night.”
“No. I wouldn’t say offended is the word.” She could think of plenty others. But gratuitous meanness didn’t form a major component of her personality. She liked to think, anyway. Besides, there was something about the rabbi’s halting voice that struck a chord inside her. A quality of vulnerability. Of innocence.
“But not too favorably impressed.”
“Well…not with your associates. To be perfectly candid with you, Rabbi Leibowitz, I hate to think of myself as giving in to guilt by association. That said—given that you chose to surround yourself with such associates, and their project—I formed a certain impression of you. I apologize if I judged you unfairly. I guess I’m as subject to human frailties as anybody.”
He laughed. “Oh, don’t say that, Ms. Creed. And please don’t judge the men you met with me last night too harshly. They are good men, whatever their enthusiasms.”
“It’s good men I’ve learned to fear most in the world, Rabbi. Especially the enthusiastic ones. Look, I’m willing to admit I may have judged you too hastily. I apologize for that. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“Please, Ms. Creed.” His voice pulsed with urgency. “Hear me out. I’m not really concerned…with your opinion of me. But I think it would be a great tragedy if you passed on participating in this project without hearing certain aspects of it that, that maybe got glossed over last night. And I’d like to ask you, as a favor to me, even though you certainly don’t owe me anything, if you would at least examine my credentials online. I’m not in fact a colleague of yours,