Jon Merz - Raider X

“No vegetables?”

Thatcher shook his head. “I’ll tell you the truth: I’m still traumatized from when I was a young child and my mother used to insist we eat the most horrendous vegetables imaginable. Beets, of all things. Lima beans. Awful. Simply awful. To this day, I eat very few vegetables.”

“And yet you appear to be the picture of good health.”

Thatcher smiled. “A bit of exercise does wonders for the body, isn’t that right?”

“So I’ve been told. I studied dance at school. Sometimes I still enjoy it when I’m by myself.” She looked out across the deck. The ocean to their starboard side was calm as the Archimedes steamed ahead and the sun dipped toward the horizon. “But it has been a while, unfortunately.” She turned back to Thatcher. “What about you? Do you dance?”

“Probably not nearly as good as you, but I’ve been known to take a turn or two on the floor before. Nothing solo, mind you. But if I had the right partner, I’m fairly certain I’d make a respectable showing.”

“Something else we’ll have to try to find in Lisbon then,” said Cyra. “I could do with a spot of dancing. It would help take my mind off the current affairs plaguing the world.”

“Where do you call home now?” asked Thatcher.

“Soon enough, Lisbon,” said Cyra. “I was considering settling in London for a bit, but the Blitz put a damper on that. Plus, if I’m being honest, the weather was a bit too dreary for my liking. The warmer climes of Lisbon are much more in line with my preferences.”

“And its neutrality? Does it bother you?”

Cyra shrugged and sipped her wine. “Harrison, I have been to so many countries and through so many cultures that I am a woman without a nation to call her own. The tide of war flows as it ever does and I do my best to stay above the fray. Or at least beside it or else unconsumed by it as much as I am able.”

“Some people would call that selfish,” said Thatcher. “Not that I would, mind you.”

Cyra shrugged. “I gave up caring what people think about me a long time ago. You reach a whole new level of freedom when you do so. I highly recommend it.”

Thatcher took a sip of his wine again. “I quite agree. It’s why I set out on my own to do whatever I wished.”

“And how has that worked out for you so far?”

Thatcher glanced out at the ocean. He was laughing inside at her question. He’d been convicted of killing a man, sent to prison to face a firing squad, snatched away from that at the last moment, and drafted to become a secret agent for the Crown, only to then be shot out of the sky, nearly drowned, and finally plucked out of the ocean, only to be presumably torpedoed at some point in the near future.

“Rather well, actually,” he managed to say then.

Cyra teased him with a smile. “You are quite a specimen, Harrison Thatcher.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” said Cyra leaning forward and plucking the wine bottle from the cooler, “that I believe we need another bottle of this rather delicious wine for dinner.” She turned and motioned for the waiter to come over whereupon she ordered a fresh bottle.

“I never have a problem with another bottle,” said Thatcher. “But we should endeavor to keep our wits about us to some extent.”

“Where is the fun in that?”

Thatcher gestured to the ocean. “There are predators out here on the waves. And beneath them.”

Cyra reached over and touched him on his arm. “If anything happens, promise me you’ll help me, would you? I’m afraid swimming is not my strong suit.”

“Nor is it mine,” said Thatcher. “But don’t worry. I think we’ll have plenty of room in the life boats. I don’t think it will be a problem.”

“We’ll reach Lisbon I’m told by about two o’clock tomorrow afternoon,” said Cyra. “That doesn’t leave much time for the sea wolves to get to us, does it?”

“I suppose it rather depends on where they are at the moment,” said Thatcher. He turned his head to once again take in the spectacular sunset. It would be dark soon. He just hoped that Raider X wasn’t close; he did not want to be in the ocean at night.

“We have miles to go before we sleep,” said Cyra. “At least we can console ourselves with a sumptuous dinner and more wine.”

Thatcher nodded. “And once we reach Lisbon, we’ll be free to do whatever we wish.”

“We’re free right now if you think about it,” said Cyra. “But Lisbon is perhaps better suited to our quests.”

“Quests?”

Cyra smiled at him again. “For a proper gin and a proper dance.”

“Ah. Yes,” said Thatcher. “Those quests.”

“Were there any others that we should undertake?” Cyra ran her hand through her hair. “After all, I don’t really have many pressing engagements when we reach land.”

Thatcher leaned forward. “In that case, I feel confident in saying that we will probably be able to find any number of excursions that will be very enjoyable.”

“I hope so,” said Cyra. “I get bored easily and adventure is sometimes the only thing that satisfies me… completely.”

“Noted,” said Thatcher as the waiter arrived with their food. “Let’s eat.”

They walked the upper deck after dinner, stopping near the stern and looking out at the wake of the churning propellers that pushed them ever closer to Lisbon. Or Raider X, thought Thatcher as he watched the white frothy ocean diminish behind them.

“Do you ever think about your past and how much you’ve come through to reach the present moment?”

Thatcher looked at Cyra. “Doesn’t everyone?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, really. It seems to me that most people try to completely forget about any of the lessons they may have learned in favor of simply doing whatever they want to do in the present. Almost as if they’re so grateful that they persevered that they forsake the very things that enabled them to reach this moment in time.”

Thatcher leaned on the railing. “Maybe the past is too painful for a lot of people.”

Cyra leaned with him, her shoulder touching Thatcher’s. “I understand that. I don’t necessarily agree with it, however. Don’t we all have pain and frustrations in our past that we may be trying to forget?”

“Certainly.”

“But not all of us act like the majority. Some of us hold onto our pain and use it. Some of us know how to be… motivated, let’s say, by those skeletons in order to create a better future. Don’t you think?”

“I really don’t know,” said Thatcher. He took a deep breath and sighed. “My own past is one of a lot of pain. Confusion, too.”

“Why confusion?”

“I never felt like I fit in anywhere. I was born into money and I enjoyed the trappings of it immensely. But I never felt like I fit in with the sort of society my family wanted me to fit into. I was supposed to take a certain path, live up to their own expectations about what their son would become. When I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore, that I wanted to live for myself, it was seen as the ultimate betrayal. They couldn’t wrap their heads around why I would choose to do something else, something that would potentially hurt the family. But that was never my goal; I simply wanted to be happy. Happy with myself and happy with my life.”

Cyra was quiet for a moment. “In a lot of Asian cultures, the parents are seen as the ultimate authority figures. The children are raised to believe that their elders can do no wrong, that even after the kids are adults, their parents are still the head of the family.” She frowned and shook her head. “That’s always struck me as terribly damaging. Not just to each successive generation, but to the nation as a whole. How can children be allowed to express themselves under those conditions?”