THE BETTER PART OF VALOR - Morgan Mackinnon

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      When he admitted that sounded fine, she showed him into the kitchen and made him sit at the central island.

      “I am not a great cook, but I can do the basics. Would you like juice or coffee? Milk?”

      What Keogh wanted was a couple glasses of whiskey, but he settled for coffee. He was now convinced he was in another time, but rather than scare him, he was aware his adrenaline was pumping, and he was enjoying the challenge this “future” was offering. For the time being.

      After some food and two cups of coffee, Cresta decided it was time to show her house guest to his room. This house was a bit odd in that the master bedroom suite was upstairs but there was a guest suite down on the main floor. She supposed the last remodel her aunt made to the house had been intended for what was called a “mother and daughter,” where the daughter owned the house and mother lived in the guest suite. She involuntarily shuddered at the thought.

      She led Keogh to the far side of the living room and through a door. The bedroom was fitted out with a queen bed (thank goodness it had clean sheets), a cushioned chair, bureau, and writing desk. No wardrobe but she showed him the double closet, promising they would get him some clothes the next day. Connected to the bedroom was a sitting room with a love seat, chair, coffee table, bookcase, and small television. And beyond that, the bath which did not contain a tub but had a large shower, toilet, and sink. A cabinet held towels and a basket with an assortment of toiletries sat on a table.

      “You all set? You had gas lights and oil lamps, but these are electric. Just flick the switch to turn them on or off. Same with the lamps. There are extra blankets in the closet. If you need anything, yell. Oh, you may want to keep your bedroom door closed. Mettie and Max are nosey.”

      Once she left, Keogh wandered around his lodgings. Nicer than many hotels he’d been in. There were no constraints of any kind, so if he chose to leave the house, he could. He found that to be very reassuring because it meant this was not a prison. It was temporary until his new friends could figure out why he was here so soon. Cresta explained she would have eventually asked him to come here to the future with her, temporarily perhaps, but something had gone wrong, and they needed to figure out why. In the meantime, he would be entertained, fed, clothed, and taken care of. What else could he ask for? He knew the answer as well as he knew himself, but it would have to wait. Now was not the time.

      Chapter 20

      Once it had become apparent Dr. Leigh and their somewhat shaken friend would be staying in the present for the foreseeable future, Cresta cornered George Montoya and asked if he would shepherd the Colonel out to some men’s shops and get him some clothes to wear. He couldn’t wear Danny Convers’s sweat suit forever. Money would not be a problem once Dr. Sanford made a call this morning to Secretary of Internal Development, Rick Berstem.

      “Good morning, Secretary. Yes, we have some results. Unexpected…results. You may want to come over to the bullpen at Langley for a reconnaissance meeting. No, I think that’s a pretty good description of it. Listen, we have a…subject out of time. The one we talked about from eighteen seventy-five? Yes. I’m not sure what the hell happened but now we need to talk to Doctor Leigh, see what she’s found out, and formulate a game plan. Yes. Well, right now he needs some clothes, so I require a charge card sent over ASAP with…I don’t know, let’s set a five thousand-dollar cap on it and see where that takes us. Put it in George Montoya’s name and have a messenger bring it over. Okay? Well, you’re a Secretary, and it’s your job to do things we peons don’t get paid enough to do. Ha ha. (Sanford loved that line.) I’ll have some bourbon ready when you get here. Noon? Fine.”

      She had to give it to Jim Sanford. He quickly outlined for the Secretary the circumstances as they were known. The CATE device had apparently activated the retrieve feature prematurely without any input from the traveler. Cresta was certain she had not activated the feature because on the day in question, she hadn’t even taken the retrieval device with her. It was locked in her trunk at Orchard House in Ireland, so there was no way it could have been accidentally tripped. It would be the job of the engineering team to take the mother mechanism apart, test the components, and reassemble it so it didn’t happen again.

      In the meantime, they had a subject out of his own time, one who had not been prepped in advance. Cresta estimated about two to three months of contact, getting to know the subject, and letting him get to know and trust her in return before she began explaining she was from another time and how he fit in. Instead the subject was jerked from 1875 to 2002 with no warning and no immediate way to go back to 1875.

      When the presentation was turned over to her, the questions Rick Berstem had were what is he like, how hard will it be to explain this to him, and what reactions should they watch for.

      “I had a list of bullet points for this presentation I put together last night, but I think I would rather just forget about that and give you a cold start here. I have been observing the subject…say, could we get rid of the term ‘subject’? It makes our Irish friend sound like a lab rat. I began observation from the first encounter with Keogh, pretending I was going to miss my ship. He was gentlemanly, polite, discreet, and gallant. He is obviously fond of women. With my agreement, he acted as my escort for most of the journey. When I was cold, he wrapped me in his greatcoat. Chivalrous. I believe my first clinical observation would be Knight in Shining Armor Syndrome. He fits it perfectly. Even after someone saw him coming out of my cabin one morning with his boots in one hand and jacket in the other, when that peeping tom suggested we had been frolicking around together, Mister Keogh nearly challenged the fellow to a duel, all over my perceived reputation. That protectiveness continued when I was nearly raped in Dublin.” She ignored the expressions of her audience. “When I failed to find my relative in Dublin, Mister Keogh not only saved me but invited me to his family home.

      “Second clinical observation would be depression. As many young boys do, he looked to his father for guidance. His father died while Keogh was young, the senior Keogh a gentleman farmer but with a brother who had been hanged in seventeen ninety-eight for his Nationalist activities. One of Keogh’s elder brothers took over the role of father, but our friend never found the encouragement and direction he was looking for. Instead, he wound his dreams around a character in a book about an orphan in the Irish Dragoons who finds glory and purpose as a soldier of fortune. Young Keogh did the same, going off to fight in the Papal wars at the age of twenty. He sold his sword to the Union in eighteen sixty-two. I have noticed a pattern in that every one of the generals Keogh served as a staff aide-de-camp became father figures to him. He went to a Confederate prison with one of them because he would not leave the General by himself. A second General became ill and died in Keogh’s arms. It was said he wept bitterly. Now he is midthirties, and I’m not sure he ever did find the father he was searching for.

      “What has happened here is that the young Keogh made his life’s choices when he was barely out of adolescence, and now, he feels if he alters them, he will be surrendering his ideals which are truth, valor, and honor. He does not understand choices can be redirected without losing one’s identity or integrity.

      “Gentlemen, it is this personal trait we will struggle with the most. Myles Keogh is going to feel he must fulfill his destiny as he saw it previously, and any deviation to that destiny will mean failure. In other words, he is likely to make the decision to march to his death for a hopeless, unnecessary battle fought by a madman who valued blind loyalty and glory over all else, including human life.

      “There are a couple other things I think I should mention. The first one I’m going to talk about because it may cause us some reticent behavior in the present. Our Mister Keogh is a highly sexed individual. It radiates off him. The problem with that is, he made certain other decisions as an adolescent in order to conform with his life as a soldier of fortune. Because of that long-ago book about the Irish Dragoon, he is convinced he should avoid marriage and family and consign himself to loneliness the rest of his life. That translates to sexual frustration because a soldier doesn’t have a lot of access to women, and that results in more depression. So far, he’s managed it, I think, one way or the other, but my point here is that he does not approve of indiscriminate sex. He is Catholic, so his faith would

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