The Exfiltrator by Garner Simmons (read after txt) 📗

“Indeed, a fine idea. Unfortunately, there is much to do.  Dr. Corbett will need every minute to prepare.”

“Dr. Asurias is right,” Corbett reluctantly agreed.  Then reading their faces, he attempted to ease their disappointment, “But not to worry.  I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time once we reach the site.”

“Do we know when we’ll leave?” Ella asked.

“You must be packed and at El Puente Romano tomorrow by five,” Asurias replied.

“Five…?” Karim looked slightly stunned.  “…in the morning?”

“Si, si, mañana…” the professor confirmed with an exasperated smile, “So you will not be late. Comprenda…?”

“Si...” Karim answered. “A las cinco de la mañana.”

“See you in the morning,” Corbett nodded to Ella and the others as they said their goodbyes then turned his attention to demands of the upcoming trek into the mountains.

*****

Outside Asurias’ office, the three graduate students stood briefly discussing what lay before them.  Clearly excited by the prospect of being part of such a project, the two men decided to meet for supper later that evening and suggested Ella join them, but she declined.  Too much to do if she was to be ready by the crack of dawn.  Saying goodbye, she moved off alone.

“Otro lesbian.”  Roberto said with a derisive shake of his head once he felt she was out of earshot.

“No…?  You really think so?” Karim asked.  “How do you know?

“Just look at her.  She wears her hair like a boy and dresses like a man.  Definitely a lesbian.  I’d put money on it.  Let’s go for coffee.”

The two young men moved off together down the corridor.

*****

Returning through the meandering streets to her rented room, a cramped single on the second floor of an older building located off the Calle de la Compañia, Ella unlocked the door and stepped inside.  Smelling vaguely of Lysol and aging wallpaper paste it was sparsely furnished: a narrow bed, dresser and a small desk with a chair barely left room to maneuver.  A common bathroom, shared with five other young students, all female, was down the hall.  Despite the cramped conditions, she had taken it on a week-to-week knowing that she would only be staying a short time before heading into the mountains.

Dropping her backpack on the desk, she kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the bed, propping up her head with a pillow.  She would have to write her mother this evening and let her know that she would be travelling into the Pyrenees and would be unreachable for at least six weeks.

Her mother, Nora Joyce, was a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.  Having reclaimed her maiden name following the divorce from Ella’s father, an executive with Aetna Insurance, who now lived with his new wife and their young son in Manhattan, Ella’s mother tended to worry if she didn’t hear from her regularly.

Her parents had separated when Ella was ten.  It had been an acrimonious divorce.  She had been aware of her father’s infidelities but never expected he would leave them for another woman.  She could still picture him coming into her room late one night and sitting on the edge of her bed.  He spoke in a low almost inaudible voice as he attempted to explain that this had been the most difficult decision of his life.  But the truth was, he and her mother had drifted apart, and he had found someone else.  Assuring Ella that he still loved her and always would, he had explained that he would be there for her no matter what.  Which of course, she would soon learn meant as long as it was convenient for him.  It bothered her that her father had not fought for custody.  But to be honest, her mother had not helped matters by accepting the teaching position a thousand miles from Manhattan.

In truth, Ella had intrinsically understood her mother’s need to put distance between herself and her former husband.  Even so, she could not deny the shock and hurt she felt when her father soon announced that he intended to remarry.   He asked her to be in the wedding and offered to pay for her to fly to New York.  But sensing her mother’s taciturn rage, she had declined.  Over the intervening years, her contact with her father had become limited almost exclusively to holidays. And even then, when she saw him, she felt that she was somehow betraying some unspoken bond with her mother.

The divorce had affected her other ways as well.  Socially she rarely dated in high school and had few close friends.  As a result, it was the fall of her sophomore year at Northwestern before she decided to have sex.  As a teenager, she had resisted because it seemed that everyone was doing it.  But by the time she was nearly twenty, her virginity had begun to feel like an encumbrance.  For Ella, shedding it had become a necessary rite of passage, something to be dispensed with so that she could get on with the rest of her life.  She was thinking of becoming an English major and had met the boy she gave herself to in a class on 17th century English poetry.  It was an unseasonably warm October evening, and they fumbled together beneath a blanket he had spread out on the edge of Lake Michigan.  Awkwardly quoting Andrew Marvel, he satisfied himself but left her wondering what all the fuss had been about.  “Had we but world enough and time...” indeed.  After it was over, he dropped her back at her dorm and never called again, not that she wanted him to.  As her mother was fond of saying: “Girls will always be women, men will always be boys.”

It was shortly after this, just before Thanksgiving break, that she had gone with a girlfriend to a lecture titled “New Discoveries in the Evolution, Culture and Eventual Extinction