Defiant (an Ell Donsaii story #9) (17 page)

The secret service agent took Ell out into the hall and turned her over to a member of the Uniformed Service Division. As he did so he whispered, “Sorry.”

“That’s OK, you’re just doing your job. Keep it up.”

As she was marched away, he watched after her, a frog in his throat. He noticed other people staring, appalled to see Ell Donsaii, the darling of their country, in cuffs. Even with her arms cuffed behind her back, the slender young woman in the black pantsuit with a crimson blouse had an astonishing presence, drawing their eyes. She even nodded pleasantly to them. With a sigh he stepped back into the office with the President, jaw working with frustration.

The President, he could hear, was speaking to her Attorney General about what to do with Donsaii.

***

Jennifer Oakey looked up as her boss Dan Short called her name.

“Jen, you aren’t going to guess who we’re checking in.”

“A congressman?”

Dan barked a laugh, “Admittedly they’re all crooks, but no.”

“A congresswoman?”

“Ell Donsaii!”

“No shit? What’d she do?”

“Pissed off the President, from what I hear.”

Jen snorted, “Well, that shows bad judgment.
I
certainly wouldn’t want to get crosswise of that woman!”

“Which one?”

“Stockton. She strikes me as the vengeful type. Donsaii might crush you but only if you deserved it.”

Dan turned his head, “Here she is now. You’re going to in-process her.”

“Me?”

“Yeah Mel’s got the duty, but she’s too inexperienced. With a VIP like this I don’t want anything getting screwed up. Mel can back you up while you’re doing it.”

Jen grinned at him and raised an eyebrow, “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

Dan raised an eyebrow in return and said, “Don’t I just wish.”

Twenty minutes later, with Mel standing well behind her, Jen watched Donsaii gracefully changing out of her black pantsuit and into the orange prison coverall, Jen thought to herself that Dan would indeed “have wished.” Jennifer had long admired Donsaii’s beautiful face with its smooth, elegant and symmetrical features. The brilliant green eyes didn’t hurt either. But she was almost agape watching her change clothes. Jen had never seen such a slender, graceful female body. Hetero though Jen might be, she had to admire the loveliness of the woman changing clothes in front of her. She almost snorted aloud when Donsaii put on the industrial strength underwear the facility supplied—the ugly bra and granny panties looked great on the woman. Same for the shapeless coverall.

The woman would probably look stunning in a gunnysack,
Jen thought.

Throughout the procedure, Donsaii was pleasant and polite, thanking Jen for keeping her clothes folded, not appearing at all discomfited by her nudity. As opposed to most of the women Jennifer processed into the facility, women for whom Jen typically had no respect, Jen found herself admiring Donsaii. Initially for her beauty and flawless physique, but then more and more for the graceful and courteous manner in which Donsaii conducted herself. By the time Jen had finished boxing up Donsaii’s possessions and got her to sign for them Jen found herself saying, “I’m terribly sorry about this Ms. Donsaii. I hope they work out whatever happened pronto and get you back out of here.”

Donsaii flashed a brilliant smile at her, “Well thank you, Ms. Oakey. I certainly hope so as well.”

Finished with the in-processing, Jen and Mel walked Donsaii down to the isolation holding cell where to her surprise Donsaii thanked her for her courtesy. Jen had never put anyone in a cell that had spoken to her so politely. Especially when they were put in the solitary cell which had only a little grated window in its door. Six by ten feet and furnished only with a toilet bowl, a showerhead, a sink and a thinly padded narrow cot, it was pretty disheartening to look at, much less to live in.

Jen shook her head bemusedly as she headed back out front. Before she returned to her desk, she stopped a moment and pondered. She turned to check the video surveillance of Donsaii’s cell, telling the guard watching the cameras that she wanted to make sure the young woman wasn’t doing anything wrong. Inside, she realized that she felt some kind of a bond with Donsaii and wanted to make sure the young woman was OK.

With some dismay, Jen saw that Donsaii had gotten onto her cot and pulled the blankets up over her head. That wasn’t too unusual for inmates. Many did it when they’d become depressed over their apparently hopeless situation.

But, it usually took a long time for them to get miserable enough to hide under the covers, so it didn’t often occur at the temporary holding facility where Jen worked.

***

Shan had just arrived back at their house when his AI said, “You have a call from Raquel.”

“I’ll take it… Hey Raquel, how’d the meeting with Stockton go?”

“Pretty grim.” Ell said, just above a whisper, “I’ve been arrested.”

“Arrested!”

“Yeah, right now I’m in a holding cell but I’m pretty sure they’ll be taking me somewhere else.”

“My God! I’m on my way up to DC!”

“Don’t! You couldn’t do anything to help up here. As soon as we hang up I’ll be contacting the legal team I’ve put on retainer to deal with these Blaustein bill issues. They’re the people who might be able to do something. If you came up here it would only serve to immediately blow my Raquel identity, though my other identities won’t last very long if they start going through my life with a fine toothed comb.”

Shan closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, “Come on. There must be
something
I can do!”

“Yeah, take care of yourself. Tell everyone Raquel’s gone on a business trip. Start figuring out what you’re going to do if and when they figure out you’re married to a criminal. Especially, start asking yourself what you’re going to do if we can’t resolve this legal crisis and I decide I have to move to a different country.”

“What! Surely you don’t think they’ll just
let you go
if they don’t get what they want?”

“No, but I might just leave without their permission. Oops, gotta go.”

With the connection abruptly cut, Shan sat back to wonder how she thought she’d be able to get out of whatever prison they were holding her in?

***

There’d been a knock on the door of her cell that caused her to cut her connection with Shan. Ell pulled the blankets off her head and sat up. Looking in at her through the bars Officer Oakey said, “Ms. Donsaii, are you OK?”

Surprised at the concern she heard in the officer’s voice Ell said, “Yes Ma’am.” She couldn’t very well tell them she had just been using her implants to contact her husband, so instead she said, “Just thinking about my situation. It’s easier for me to concentrate if I cover my head.” She shrugged, “Weird, I know.” Thinking that to deflect suspicion she should request to communicate in the normal fashion, she said, “Am I allowed a phone call?”

Oakey looked truly remorseful, “The Attorney General’s office called and said to hold you incommunicado for now. It’s a common misconception that you have a legal right to a phone call. Some states do give you that right, but it isn’t a Federal right and we’re a Federal facility. Sorry. Keep your chin up, I’m sure that whatever put you in here is just some kind of misunderstanding.”

“Thanks for your concern. I’ll do my best to keep my spirits up, but I would like to think for a while. I assume it’s OK if I turtle up under the blanket again?”

“Sure.” The officer turned and left.

Lying back down, Ell rolled on her side, pulled the blanket back up over her head and said, “Allan, send me a camera and projection port through my abdominal port, five centimeters out.” She tugged the coverall tight against her tummy and looked down. It took a minute for a waldo in one of her hidden storerooms to pick the AV port she’d requested and drop it through the one ended port hidden under the skin beneath her belly button. It popped out into the air under the blanket and fell to the sheets. It was actually a pair of ports, back to back. One side had the lens for a projector that could project a video image such as would normally be displayed on her HUD. The other side was a camera that Allan could use to see what was going on in her environment. Ell picked it up and said, “Project my AV recording from the time I arrived at the White House gate through the end of my meeting with the President.”

Ell pointed the port at the sheets a little ways in front of her eyes and a moment later Allan began projecting the recording her HUD had made of her White House experience onto the sheet. She watched it through, then said, “Clip off the part before I arrive at the guard house.” Ell paused thinking, then said, “Leave in the audio part from when the President removed my headband and on up to right after the point where she said, ‘
I’ll
bet you change your mind after some time in solitary,’ then cut it off there. Now, insert a time clock in the lower left corner of the video image. Next, let me see the first and the last minutes of what you’ve got...” After that had been projected on the sheets for her she said, “OK, Allan, distribute that to the news outlets along with the material I prepared on the Ementhal committee.”

Ell thought for a couple of minutes, then said, “Connect me to Art Jenkins.”

A minute later she heard Jenkins’ voice, “Dr. Donsaii? What can I do for you?”

“Hey Art, my fears have panned out and I’ve been arrested.”

Jenkins said, “Why are you whispering?”

“I haven’t been allowed a phone call yet. The Attorney General has ordered that I be held incommunicado. So I’m using some of my… special technology to talk to you anyway.”

Jenkins barked a laugh, “That’s rich. OK let’s talk about what you’ve been accused of…”

Chapter Six

Breaking News—On the orders of President Stockton, Ell Donsaii has been arrested today at the White House. This was apparently due to her noncompliance with the Blaustein bill which passed into law last fall. That bill was specifically drafted to require Donsaii to turn over all contact equipment and all future contact with alien civilizations—such as the Teecees or any future encounters—to the Ementhal committee.

Neither the White House nor other governmental sources have made an announcement regarding her arrest as of yet. Our information on it comes from a release of the AV recording of Dr. Donsaii’s arrest made available by Donsaii’s AI. That AV record shows Donsaii’s HUD being personally removed from Donsaii’s head by President Stockton. Donsaii’s recording of the incident has been released in spite the loss of her connection to her AI. We speculate that this might have been on instructions she had left to that effect prior to the removal of her HUD.

You may wonder about President Stockton’s accusation that Donsaii was late to their meeting. However, as Donsaii says in the recording—available here—of her confrontation with President Stockton in the Oval Office, the AV recording and its time stamp confirms that Donsaii did arrive on time to the White House. She was, as she claimed, only late for her meeting with the President because she was held up at the gate and then taken back and forth across the White House by White House staff.

Many have expressed outrage at the rude manner with which Stockton treated Donsaii in their encounter—probably not expecting that an AV record of the events could ever see the light of day. “Whether she broke the law or not, the woman who saved our entire world from that comet deserves to be treated with respect,” said Roger Nesbitt of Silver Springs, Maryland…

Donsaii makes reference to the dangers of turning alien contact over to the Ementhal committee. The basis of that danger is not entirely clear, but certainly it would appear that she does not think much of the members of the committee. Although this information has not been back checked as yet, appended to the recording of Dr. Donsaii’s White House encounter is an extremely detailed analysis of eight of the twelve individuals on the Ementhal committee. This information, supposedly all publicly available, appears damning. It begins with Ementhal himself; calling into question the work he did to obtain his PhD. Donsaii has put forth evidence suggesting that Ementhal may have fabricated his results…

Stockton stormed around her office. Secret Service agent Will Argant no longer felt surprise at the woman’s temper and vitriol. When he’d first been assigned to her during the campaign, he’d arrived with the preconception that women were calmer and more pleasant than men. Certainly she almost always showed a calm face to the world. In the debates she had used a lot of biting words and been described as “bitchy,” but the world in general had no idea how the woman behaved in private. So far she’d thrown her pen and a paperweight across the room. The paperweight had splintered some of the paneling. The loud bang had resulted in a couple of his fellow agents bursting into the room looking for a weapon, only to be told, “Get the hell out!”

Now she’d fixed her ire on her Attorney General, Raul Stenner, and secondarily on the rest of the people in the room. “So, any ideas on how she got that goddamned video out? I personally removed the AI chip from her HUD.”

Stenner raised his hands helplessly indicating he had no idea.

Stockton turned, her eyes tracking around the room, “Anybody? How did that go out?”

When Stockton’s eyes paused on Will he shrugged. Recognizing that her grasp of technical issues was poor he said, “The chip you removed wasn’t actually the AI. It was only the PGR chip which communicates with her AI. It doesn’t store anything, so all the AV record had already left her HUD and gone to her AI. She likely keeps the AI itself in a secure location.” From a slight widening of her eyes as he spoke, he saw Stockton comprehending her mistake.

Will felt little surprise, however, when she pretended she had actually known the chip’s function. Stockton said, “I know
that,
Agent. But how did she tell her AI to send the record out to the press?”