“Yes.” While Walter was still in his mid-twenties, he was incredibly competent and dedicated to his job. He also wasn’t normally this coy. Something was up in a big way.
Jeff’s mouth was opening, presumably to tell Walter to spill the beans. Put up the paw. Jeff’s mouth slammed shut. Amazing. I’d been testing out my Talk To The Hand gesture, and prior to my being made the First Lady it had had no real effect. The moment I became the FLOTUS, though, the paw had power. It was always nice to have something, anything, in the win column.
“Walter, who would you feel better sharing this particular communication with?”
There was a pause. “Only you, Chief First Lady.”
More mouths opened. Put the paw right back up. Mouths slammed shut. It wasn’t the coolest power, but it was one I apparently had in spades, so I was keeping it. “I’ll be right there, Walter. Is it okay if Malcolm comes with me?” Asked because I knew without asking that Buchanan was going to come with me whether Walter wanted him there or not.
“Yes.” The com went dead.
“What the hell?” Jeff asked the room in general and me in particular.
“Do you think we’re infiltrated?” Chuckie asked, before I could reply. “Because this doesn’t seem like Walter but it does seem suspicious.”
“It does seem suspicious, but I don’t think Walter would willingly or knowingly ask me to walk into a trap. I think he’s completely unsure of the correct protocol for whatever situation he thinks he or we are in and is, therefore, asking for the one person he knows doesn’t give a crap about protocol at all.”
“I agree,” Buchanan said. He drew back my chair and helped me up. Jeff glared at him but it was only about a three on his jealousy scale, or, as I thought of it, Jeff’s base reaction to any man doing anything with me that Jeff felt he should be the one doing. “If we’re infiltrated, we’ll let you know.”
“How?” Chuckie asked flatly.
“I’ll run through the White House complex screaming.”
“Sure you will,” Jeff said, sarcasm knob at about eight on the one-to-ten scale. “But fine, we’ll carry on with Tim’s news here, you find out what the hell’s going on with Walter.”
Buchanan and I headed off. Wruck and Siler followed us. I chose not to complain about this. Instead, I decided to ask Team Tough Guys a pertinent question. “Any guesses?”
“Many,” Siler said. “Too many to waste the breath, since we’ll find out soon enough.”
“I assume that you three don’t think this is as benign as I do.”
“I assume there is no immediate threat,” Wruck said. “But Walter sounded very stressed, meaning a threat is coming. Potentially.”
“Anytime someone only wants you, Missus Executive Chief, it means that something’s going down and they want the person most likely to come up with the best plan of attack or retreat to weigh in first.”
“Wow, Malcolm, when did you add sucking up to your repertoire? I don’t mind, but it’s kind of a surprise.”
Buchanan chuckled. “There are people who are more loyal to you than to anyone else, even Mister Executive Chief.”
“Three of them are with you right now,” Siler added dryly.
“I’m all kinds of flattered. And I’m sure you feel that Walter’s one of those.”
“You’re the reason he went from handling gate transfers at the Dulce Science Center to two of the top Security positions Centaurion has,” Buchanan pointed out. “You’re the reason his brother has the topmost Security position. Yes, he’s loyal to you, first, and the rest of Centaurion’s core teams second.”
“Same with his brother,” Siler added. “Frankly, if you ever leave your husband it will cause a schism as dramatic as the one Club Fifty-One’s gone through.”
“Not that I’m planning to leave Jeff.”
“Right now,” Buchanan said with a laugh. “It was a near thing though.”
“True.” I’d been really mad at Jeff during Operation Madhouse, after all. Him allowing warheads to be aimed at the ship I was in had that effect on me. Not to mention him making deals with terrorists. And him buying the idea that I was big in the helpless victim department. Decided I should stop thinking about this because it still had the potential to piss me off, even though I understood what had driven all those bad decisions. “But it was all a big misunderstanding.”
“Keep in mind that misunderstandings like that can and do happen all the time,” Siler said. “And when they happen on international and galactic stages, they can have far longer-lasting ramifications than a familial spat.”
“Or,” Wruck said, “they can have exactly the same ramifications.”
CHAPTER 5
“MIND EXPLAINING THAT, JOHN?” I asked as we wandered the White House Complex. I sucked at mazes, and while the White House wasn’t that bad on the maze scale, we hadn’t been here all that long and we’d been hella busy our short time here, so I still tended to get lost and wander into the wrong room more often than not.
“The Ancients and the Z’porrah weren’t always enemies.”
This news was so shocking that the rest of us literally stopped in our tracks. “Come again?” I asked when I could find my voice.
“Tens of thousands of years ago, we were friends. Our races are two of the oldest in the galaxy, and we were encouraged by races even older than us to go forth and help the younger races. Originally, the Ancients and the Z’porrah worked together to uplift various species.”
“Any we know of?” Siler asked.
Wruck shook his head. “Our galaxy is teeming with life, and all of these were far closer to the Core. Over time, though, arguments happened. There’s no clear answer for why we became bitter enemies—each side has their own story, but experience has taught me that the true answer lies somewhere in the middle.”
“That’s why there are so many Ancients who are Z’porrah spies, isn’t it?” I asked. “The relationship goes back far enough that, to some Ancients, whatever the Z’porrah think is right.”
Wruck nodded. “It goes the other way, as well. There are Z’porrah who are our spies, for example.”
“I learn something new every single day. Glad I’m open to it. Speaking of which, though, there’s no way your people call themselves the Ancients. As far as I knew, the A-Cs here on Earth named you guys the Ancients.”
“In a way. However, the sound of the name we call ourselves is very close. Anciannas is our real name. It’s not surprising the A-Cs translated that to Ancients. And these days, it fits.”
“Yeah, it does. You know, LaRue—well, the LaRue on Bizarro World—told me that the name you had for yourselves was unpronounceable for humans.”
Wruck shrugged. “The Z’porrah refuse to use our name. She was a Z’porrah spy.”
“Gotcha. She didn’t want to say the name so told me I couldn’t say it and we moved on. So, was the book we found and translated a religious text?”