Thomas Hoover - Project Cyclops

"Well, for the record I'll admit that my best friend was from before college, and it's a he. Georges." She decided to skip over the matter of Alan Harris. He had been a friend as well as a lover. A good friend, or so she thought. Once. "But I think the buzzer just went off. Game over."

"Whoa, don't bail out now, just when it's getting good. This was your idea, remember? And I'm not through." He leaned back. "Okay, let's really get tough. Go personal. You figure falling for some guy might just end up breaking your heart. Maybe it already happened to you once or twice. So these days you don't let things go too far." He rubbed at his chin as he studied her. "How'm I doing?"

"The rules of the game don't include having to answer questions." She took a deep breath. Mike Vance was definitely better at this than she'd reckoned. "But if you want to keep going, we'll have round two. Back to you. I'd guess you're always in control, or you want to be. So what happens is, you co-opt the things and people around you, make them work for you. And from the way things have gone so far, I'd say luck seems to be on your side; some people are like that and you're one of them."

"Don't be too sure." He checked the steaks again, then flipped them over. They were coming along nicely, the fat around the edge beginning to char the way he liked. "Luck always has a way of running out eventually."

"Tell me about it…" she said, letting her voice trail off.

"But I'd also guess you're a homebody in your soul. You like a roaring fire and a glass of wine and a good book over going out to paint the town."

"And you're probably just the opposite. You want to be out in the sun and wind and rain. Sitting around bores you."

"Guilty." He nodded. "Now for round three. That glass of wine you have with the book is probably something tame. Say, Chablis."

"You drink… mmmm, let me see. Scotch is too mundane. I'll bet it's tequila. Straight."

"You're psychic. But you missed the lime."

"Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing." She grew somber. "You like a good battle. So taking on these thugs is going to be the most fun you've had all week."

"That's where you just went off the track." His eyes narrowed, the corners crinkling. "We're definitely on the wrong end of the odds here. These bastards are dug in, they've probably got A-bombs, and we know for sure they've got a lot of helpless people in their grasp. That's not a recipe for heroics. It's more like one for pending tragedy." He paused, deciding it was definitely time to change the subject. "Speaking of tragedies, it would be a major one if we didn't have a Greek salad to go with those steaks."

He walked over and checked the fridge. Sure enough, there was a massive bowl of ripe, red tomatoes sitting next to a pile of crisp cucumbers. Most important of all, there was a huge chunk of white feta cheese. Yep, the chef had to be Greek. And up there, on a high kitchen shelf, were rows and rows of olives, curing in brine. Throw them all together with a little oregano, lemon juice, and olive oil, and the traditional side dish of Greece was theirs.

"Just the stuff." He pulled down a jar of olive oil and one of dark Greek olives. Then he selected some tomatoes and a cucumber and went to work.

"You know, you're not a half-bad Greek chef. My mother would have loved you. You're making that salad exactly the way she used to." She made a face. "Every day. God, did I get sick of them. All I wanted to eat was french fries. So when I finally got away, off at college, I practically lived on cheeseburgers and pizza for years after that."

"Shame on you. This is very wholesome. Very good for your state of mind." He finished slicing the tomatoes, then opened the fridge and fished out a couple of brown bottles of the local beer. "Retsina would be the thing, but this will have to do." He looked over. "By the way, how're the steaks coming?"

"Looks like our feast is ready." She pulled them off the grill and onto plates. "How long has it been since you ate?"

"Think it's about two days now." He finished tossing the salad and served them each a hearty helping. "Didn't realize how famished I was till I smelled those T-bones broiling." He popped the caps on the beers and handed her one. "Bon appetit. Better eat hearty, because this may be the last food we're going to see for a while."

She took a bite, then looked up, chewing. "It's delicious. And I want to say one more thing about our game a while ago." She stopped to swallow. "And I mean this. It's always a little sad when I see a person who can do a lot of things but doesn't really find total satisfaction in any of them. Nothing they ever do really makes them happy. And I think that's you, really. I'll bet that whenever you're doing one thing, you're always thinking about some other things you could be doing. Which means you're never really content. You always want more."

"That's pretty deep stuff." He had launched hungrily into his steak. "Maybe you're right, but I'm not going to come out and admit it. It's too damning. So let me put it like this. Maybe I happen to think it's possible to care about a lot of things at once. That's-"

"Such as?"

"Well, okay, I'll give you a 'for instance.' I like sailing around these islands, but all the time I'm doing it, I'm thinking about what it must have been like two, three thousand years ago. The archaeology. It's intrigued me as long as I can remember. My dad was the same; he spent his life digging around in Crete. I thought that was the most marvelous thing in the world, so I did it, too. For years. Even wrote a book about that island once. I loved the place. Still do."

"That's funny. I was born practically in the shadow of Crete, and yet I've only been there a couple of times." She sighed. "Well, what happened? I mean to your love affair with Crete. Sounds like that's what it was."

"Maybe I loved the place too much. I don't know." He paused to take a drink of the beer, cold and refreshing. "Well, when you love somebody, or something, you want to find out everything there is to know about them. But when I did that, and told what I'd concluded was the real story, or what I passionately believed was the real story, nobody wanted to hear it. I had some ideas about the island's ancient age of glory that didn't jibe with the standard theories. Made me very unpopular in the world of academia. Scholars don't like their boats to be rocked."

"And you let that get you down?" She snorted. Being a woman, she'd had an uphill battle all her life. Men could be such babies sometimes. "See, when the world's against you, that's when you're supposed to fight hardest. That's always been my rule. I'm not a quitter. Ever."

He winced and stopped eating. "Hey, I'm back, aren't I? In Greece." He looked at her, impulsively wanting to touch her again. "But it's nice to have somebody like you to pitch in and help. Maybe we'll manage something together."

"Maybe you should have had somebody around the first time." God, he was really reminding her of Alan. The same buttons. "Maybe you're not as tough as you think."

"Adversity depresses me. Like bad weather. I prefer life without too many psychodramas." And this Greek fireball, he told himself, had psychodrama written large all over her. Still…

"Then the question now is what I should do." She looked at him, taking a last bite. "Go back, or stay with you."

"We need to learn from Ulysses’ experience with the Cyclops," Vance said, clicking back into the real world. "The one-eyed giant had trapped him and his crew and was devouring them one by one. So how did they overcome him? They got him plastered on some good Greek wine, then put out his eye with a burning post. That done, they proceeded to exploit his disability."

"What are you saying?" She frowned.

"This guy is killing off your people, right? Pierre is coming in with his crew to try and take this place down, but in the meantime it would be good if we took a shot at putting out their eyes."