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Chapter 7. TSA

  Maybe half an hour later, I found myself in a different building outside a door with a brass plate that said "Simon Fletcher." In the meantime Angel had showed me enough of the TSA to get me sort of oriented and confuse me completely and intrigue me in a big way.

  My room—when we left, I saw that there was a brass plate on the door that said "Mitchell Wynand"—was on the third floor. There were three other doors, two with names on them, one without, on my floor.

  We went down the stairs, which came out in a great big room. It had a fireplace on one wall, and a lot of big comfortable couches and chairs, and a huge plasma screen on another wall, and lots of bookcases. The floor was carpeted.

  "This is the common room," Angel said. I thought I wouldn't mind at all spending some time there.

  The stairs came down to the right of the fireplace, and there was a door on the left, beyond it. She took me through the door, into a hallway that ran left and right behind the fireplace wall.

  "Here's the women's locker room," she said, "and the men's is down there. Beyond is the gym and then the pool. You walk through the men's and I'll meet you."

  It was an ordinary locker room, maybe more upscale than most, like you'd find in a really nice gym or country club. At the opposite end were two doors, one marked "Gym" and one marked "Pool." I opened the Pool door and found myself in a long colonnade with a solid wall on my right and arches into the gym on my left. There was a woman running on a treadmill, one on an elliptical trainer, and a couple of other people on the weight machines.

  Angel waved to me from the colonnade opposite and started walking down, so I did too. The end wall was another colonnade, and beyond it was a pool, I would guess Olympic size. The first half of the pool, where the colonnades came out, was roofed, then it was open with a big lawn on both sides. The end—it was an infinity pool and beyond the end was nothing but a view of mountains.

  There were chaises and chairs all around, in the shade under the roof and out on the lawns in the sun, and a few people were sitting or sunning or swimming.

  Angel walked toward me along the connecting colonnade, and I went to meet her.

  "This is totally awesome," I said. It was.

  She smiled. "There are suits and towels, also workout gear, in the locker rooms. Take any empty locker for your stuff." She turned and so did I, and we walked back along our respective colonnades past the gym and through the locker rooms and met again at the door into the common room.

  At the end of the room opposite the fireplace, I now realized, there was no wall but a row of white columns, like front-porch columns in an antebellum mansion. We walked out between them. Beyond the columns there was a flowerbed on either side of a brick walkway that led to a brick-paved square with a fountain in the middle of it. Opposite and on either side were other buildings, but—

  But the building on the right was—well, in front of the, what should have been the outside wall, only it had a fireplace in it and bookcases on either side, were a rug and a couch and some chairs. Like a room. Only beyond the back of the couch was the fountain. And overhead was the sky. And where we were standing were flowerbeds.

  I looked at it and looked around and looked at Angel, who was smiling.

  "What happens when it rains?" I asked.

  The smile turned into a grin. "Good intuitive leap," she said. "Most people want to know whether they're inside or outside, and the answer is of course yes. But to answer your question, it only rains on the plants. Unless you're somewhere and you really want it to rain on you—I would guess, I've never tried. Never mind." She grinned again.

  "That building"—she pointed to the one with the fireplace—"is the library. The door is just around the corner to the right. There are maps, diagrams to show you where the different kinds of books and everything is. You can take out whatever you want, take it to your room or the common room or anywhere, or read there if you like.

  "Down there"—she pointed to the left—"see the wooden plank floor with the rag rugs, between those two buildings? Follow that down, take the first left, and you'll come to the entrance to the labs. You can go in and wander around—you can go anywhere, anywhere you want, except of course into somebody's room without being invited.

  "Anyway, I'll call somebody over there at the labs, probably Nicholas, and tell him you might come by. That way he'll be expecting you and will be ready to answer your questions. Is there anyplace else you think you might want to go?"

  I didn't know enough to know what else there was in the TSA, and I thought she had given me enough options to fill any free time I might have, so I said, "I don't think so."

  "Oh, I almost forgot," she said. "Meals are available in your common room, so when it's lunchtime or dinnertime—basically when you get hungry—that's one of the places you can eat." I nodded.

  "Okay, then," she said, and we set off across the square, past the building opposite and down what seemed to be a carpeted hallway with sconces mounted on the walls on either side, only it was the unroofed alley between two buildings and led into a round carpeted foyer that was definitely inside—it had a ceiling.

  "Go up to the fourth floor," she said, pointing at an elevator. "To the left is a door that says 'Simon Fletcher.' That's where you're going. You'll be able to find your way back, won't you?—Just straight ahead and across the square. Oh, and ask Simon to tell you where else you can get lunch." She turned to leave.

  "Wait!" I grabbed her arm, gently. "Wait," I said again when she turned back. "Will I—will you—do I get to see you again?"

  "Oh." She looked thoughtful, then smiled up at me in a flirty way. "Do you want to?" she asked demurely.

  Instead of answering, I leaned over and kissed her again, not hard enough that she couldn't have pulled away. She didn't. It was nice, then all of a sudden it got a lot more intense. That was nice too. She let it go on a little and then did pull away.

  "Probably," she said, in a flatteringly breathless voice, and left.