Tamis arrived in Greentown around the time Kirk was wondering where in hell Harlan Soames was, and if the bastard was ever gonna show.<br/><br/>Among the items she’d packed in the company-issue tote bag slung over her shoulder was a micro-disc and a matchbox sized holoprojector, also company issue. It hadn’t been easy smuggling them out— she had to pull rank more than once, and smother a few suspicious looks with pat excuses for why she couldn’t go through the scanners (“Don’t tell anyone, but I think…” *sniffle* “… I could be pregnant…”) but she’d done it.<br/><br/>Tam paid the cab fare and walked up the path to the neat two-story home of Rob Pelham and his partner Alice. Rob was an old associate from college who’d moved out here once it became very clear he’d never make a higher rank on Botany Lab’s nepotic ladder, and took a grunt job instead. He and Alice had announced they were attempting to conceive a baby naturally soon after, though the chances of that happening with anyone these days were pretty damned slim. Tamis hadn’t seen the couple in person for several years, but had kept in touch now and then. One of the reasons Rob never made it in Olympus was that his presence at several college protests over some of GenCorps’ practises had been noted. He seemed like the right person to come to for the information she needed, or at the very least a clue on where to start out looking for it.<br/><br/>Alice answered the door, pretty in a yellow maternity dress, her blonde hair piled up in a loose bun. “Tamis! How wonderful to see you— Rob!” she turned her head, called back into the house, “You’ll never guess who’s here!”<br/><br/><br/>* * *<br/><br/><br/>“Alice honey, would you get us all something to eat? I’m starved. Tam must be, too.” They were in the lounge room, which obviously doubled as Rob’s home office. Once Alice had bustled off to arrange some soy-ham sandwiches, Rob's warm smile dropped and he looked at Tamis coldly. “So, what are you really doing here, Tamis?”<br/><br/>She dropped her gaze, picked at the sleeve of the dowdy sweater she wore. There was no point beating around the bush. “I need to find Harlan Soames.”<br/><br/>Rob burst into a short, bitter laugh, not bothering to hide his derision. “You and every SecCom squad in the country.” His eyes narrowed at her again. “Still a bigwig Downstairs?”<br/><br/>Tam nodded, not missing the sour note in his tone. She could understand it. It was Tam, after all, who’d talked him into attending those illegal rallies that would, twelve years later, ruin his chances at attaining the power his brilliant mind craved, even back then. It would seem to him a grave injustice that she had gotten to keep her job, while he…<br/><br/>“Look, Rob, I’m sorry. About Olympus, all of it. But I have nobody else to turn to. You don’t know what they’re doing over there these days.” Yeah, rubbing salt in his wounds was a real smart thing to do. She could have kicked herself, but carried on hurriedly, “It’s bad. Real bad.”<br/><br/>Tam studied him while she spoke, her tone low and hurried; there was no need to get Alice all wound up about things, especially in her condition. Rob was either still a company man at heart, or he’d kept up with the activities of their old associates out here and knew things she didn’t. Or he knew things, and would tell her to go to hell for not going down with him when she had the chance. He’d turn her in, turn her away or help her find Soames. It was a terrible risk, but one she had to take. She looked Rob in the eye, her chin tilting at that stubborn angle he’d recognise: Tamis Dunsany, on another hell-or-high-water mission.<br/><br/>Maybe it was that look of defiance that did it. Rob had long held his own suspicious concerning the Assistant Director of Psychobiology, and how she’d earned her rank without getting canned like he had. But looking at her now, the same light in her eyes that’d been there when they’d firebombed labs and burned research papers.. Rob, at that point, took his own chances. “There’s a place, down south, in the swamps. You won’t find Soames there, he’s laying low. But people who know how to get in touch with him hang out there.” He couldn’t help the nervous flitting of his eyes toward the door, in case a SecCom bug had just proved what all those years of investigation they’d done on him hadn’t been able to. “Tam, I can’t get involved. Alice, and the baby…”<br/><br/>“Alice and the baby what?” The sandwiches were piled on a platter beside a jug of sim-ale and two glasses. Alice set them down on the table between the two sofas and took a seat next to Rob.<br/><br/>Her partner smiled, patted her belly, his face blithe and free of any hint of the former conversation as he lied, “I was just saying, we should go north for a month, after she arrives.”<br/><br/>An hour later, Tam made her farewells, leaving her card wallet on the table on purpose. Rob would know that trick from college days, the old excuse to have someone run outside for a snatch of private conversation.<br/><br/>He pressed the wallet into her hand, as Alice watched from a window. Through a forced smile he said, “You can’t go there by yourself asking about Soames, you’ll be killed. Go to 452 Bayou Road and tell the woman there you came about the ad for her son’s hoverbike. Do what she says.”<br/><br/>Tam tucked her cards away. “Thanks.” She hoped that one word said all she wanted it to.<br/><br/>“And don’t get a cab. Walk. No transaction records.”<br/><br/><br/><br/>* * *<br/><br/>452 Bayou Road<br/>Greentown 08:52<br/><br/>“Whaddya want with mah boy?” A grizzled old dame cracked open the front door to her run-down house, a few miles south of the good side of Greenstown, and eyed Tam suspiciously.<br/><br/>“Is he still selling the hoverbike, ma’am? I came about the ad.”<br/><br/>Tam was hauled in by her arm, the door slammed behind her. The old woman was surprisingly strong for her age. “He’s out drinkin’. Ye come with me, an’ we’ll fetch him back to talk business.” She eyed Tamis’ boots and cackled maliciously. “Hope y’ain’t planning t’keep them shiny shoes shiny out here, missy.”<br/><br/>She was offered a pair of rubber boots and led out the back door toward where an actual hoverbike was parked on a dirt path running south from the yard. “You hold onta me tight, girl. An’ you say nothin’ to nobody. Y’unnerstan’?”<br/><br/><br/>* * *<br/><br/><strong>Francie's Place<br/>The Pits</strong><br/><br/>The woman told Tam to wait outside, once they crossed the swamp, leaving the bike about a half-mile back and walking the rest of the way to Francie’s Place. Tam would be more than happy if she never had to make that walk ever again.<br/><br/>There was no sign to distinguish Francie's from any of the other rickety buildings dotted here and there among the "wetlands", as Tam was supposed to call them in her official capacity, but it was obvious this was somewhere a man who’d gone drinking might head for. The old lady vanished inside briefly, leaving Tam to wilt under the scrutiny of a couple of scary-looking thugs that were  lounging on the porch. Then she poked her nose out the door again, beckoning the scientist inside.<br/><br/>“That’s him, over there.” She pointed to a man sitting alone in one of the far booths, smoking a cigar. “You tell him his goddamn supper’ll be on the table at six, an’ if he ain’t there, he ain’t gettin' any.” With a sharp nod at Tam and a narrow look toward the booth, she was gone.<br/><br/>Tam stood in the ruffian’s den, feeling very vulnerable and staring at Kirk Logan as he stubbed out a genuine tobacco cigar that must’ve cost an arm and a leg. Possibly, for somebody, quite literally.<br/>