Eshana, Ilad
It is a strain of his recent perennial restlessness that draws Ilad outward into the warm light of the summer sun this Sunday afternoon. Dragging a camp chair behind him out onto the deck's surface, he sets a tall glass of ice water on his small plastic table and folds himself down into it, hoisting his leg up to prop on the chair already so situated. Pen and paper accompany him in a rare deviation from his superstitious norm, but the glow of the sun in its pleasant heat is answer enough as to what has driven him from the cooler indoor sanctum.
One story up, Eshana is humming gently to herself as she moves around the raised planters of the rooftop garden, the wide sweep of a sun hat shading her face. Hardly audible above the breezes of elevation, she pauses here and there to pluck tomatos and other produce from vines threatening to spill over with midsummer bounty before sidling over to perch on the edge of the roof and begin counting through just what she's harvested, and from whose box. One by one, tomatos and potatos and radishes line up in rows... until a caprice of the wind tumbles one of the tomatos away and off the side. With a stifled curse, she watches in wide-eyed fascination and a shred of alarm as the vegetable rains down from the heavens, headed straight for Ilad's balcony and the cozy Israeli upon it.
The splatter of the ripe red tomato as it strikes his deck barely misses. Ilad, pen set against the page, pauses and looks down at the smashed red half-globe with a comical shade of stillness in his startle. Then he looks up. His expression is difficult to immediately determine through the shielding smoke of his sunglasses, but there is at least some hint of it at the corners of his mouth.
First a pair of gripping fingers appear at the corner of the roof. Next, Eshana's sunhat rises like some woven white straw moon, with the dusky eclipse of her face to follow. "Oh," she squeaks, surveying the vegetable impact site. "Shit. Sorry?"
"Ah," Ilad says on a long exhalation. He tips his head slightly to one side as he peers up toward this apparition through his sunglasses, and shifts his camp chair with a jerk of his weight, pushing it further outward toward the railing to give himself a better vantage to the woman above him. Dry humor warming his accented voice, he says: "An explanation. It did seem an unlikely manna."
"I could throw down some radishes," Eshana offers, holding one up for inspection as relieved humour turns her tone mock-solemn. "They might survive the trip better."
"One does begin to wonder why you have chosen such organic projectiles at all," Ilad says. He tucks his thumb into his notebook, tucks his pen behind his ear, and flips the former closed over his thumb. "They do not make very effective weapons."
"Not unless you had an allergy to tomatos, anyways," Eshana grants, and lowers her radish-weapon. Quickly shuffling the rest of the veggies back into the basket before they too can get ideas, she admits that "Sadly, it was the tomato's idea. I think it may have been fatally depressed, poor thing."
"Poor thing." Ilad exhales a low breath's humor, and leans back in his chair, tipping his head back as he looks up at her on the roof. It is as far from his ordinary stiff uprightness as one may see him, although of course, it is necessary to avoid a crimp in his neck in carrying on a conversation across this gap between them. "Enjoying the roof garden, are you? I had wondered. Most of my youth's knowledge of things green is lost to antiquity, I discovered when Ms. Cassidy began the project."
"It reminds me a little of home," Eshana admits, polishing a less over-ripe tomato on the cloth of a t-shirt that, even at the range between them, is visibly pink and cheerful and features some chemical structure nestled beside an anatomical drawing of a heart. Scientists are odd. Adjusting the set of her hat and leaning forward over the roof's edge a little, she explains that "My parents have had this garden allotment just off the SFU campus for years. Bicycling over and tending to it was considered a good way to keep young Anands out of trouble."
Ilad's shirt is less interesting and bears little expression of any characteristic, really; a muted shade of brown, collared but short-sleeved and worn above loose tan pants. He says, "My mother gave up most plants, save a few fresh herbs in pots, after we left the kibbutz. Too disheartening, perhaps."
"To have had that, and then..." Eshana's expression goes soft, and it appears to be a visible effort to remember to keep her voice loud enough to carry. "I can see it," she says, before nodding down to the former tomato on Ilad's balcony. "If you like, I can bring some non-exploded ones down," she ofers. "I've got to play produce fairy with the ones that belong to other people, but there are a lot to spare."
Chuckle caught in the back of his throat, Ilad arches his eyebrows up at her, and his smile tugs at his mouth. "I would not object," he says. "I am not much of a cook, but the more sandwich-ready of the Lord's creations..." He trails off and opens his hands, thumbs resting together above his chest.
"I'm sure there are some sandwiches that couldn't be improved by a slice of vine-ripened tomato," Eshana grants magnanimously. (Peanut butter and tomato?) "But I would say the vast majority can only be better with one."
"Indeed so." Ilad inclines his head as he agrees, showing largely the top of it in this instance; the smile, hard to see at this angle, stays hinted in his voice. "My thanks."
"Consider it in trade for nearly splatting you with one," Eshana suggests, before she disappears from view and resumes vegetable-sorting. A cherry tomato tumbles down at one point, paired with a "That was not intentional!" called from above.
Ilad raises his voice to answer, "I begin to doubt."
"The killer ones are still in my lab," Eshana explains, with a laugh rippling beneath her words. "I haven't told them to attack yet."
The chuckle that answers her might be too low to carry far, little more than a hum of his voice from below.
After enough time to see vegetables safely home, and not so much that it's a possibility that Eshana has been squashed by an oversized bit of vegetable matter, there comes a rapping at Ilad's door. Out in the hallway, she stands barefoot, bare-headed and beaming brightly, with a basket that contains not just the promised tomatos but some cucumbers and an eggplant as well. Why is there an eggplant? Who knows.
It takes Ilad some time to actually make it to the door, although he is clearly at home. When he reaches it, he opens it wide, standing with his weight braced on his good leg and a hint of lean in his posture, hand pressed against the door. He still has his pen tucked behind his ear, but the notebook is not in evidence. "Hello again," he greets her, with a slight upward quirk of his eyebrows.
"Oh, gosh, I didn't mean to make you get up!" says Eshana, despite, given her lack of membership amongst the larcenous set on base, the fact that it's not like he could get the door open any other way. "Um," she says, as logic dawns a moment later and interrupts her mid flutter. She holds out the basket. "I had some eggplants. Do you eat them?"
"Not to worry," Ilad says, humor lightening his expression with the higher arch of his eyebrows. "I eat eggplants, yes. Perfectly inoffensive vegetables." As he reaches to take the basket, his balance shifts a little into a weightier lean against the door, and he says, "Come in, if you'd like. Though I can't offer you anything to drink other than water," he adds, although by his tone, he seems to find his failure as a host more funny than troubling.
"Are there perfectly offensive vegetables out there, then?" Eshana queries, before a glance at Ilad and his leaning sees her scuttle into the apartment to let him have the opportunity to stop standing on his leg. She and the vegetables head for the kitchen, with the assurance of "Water's just fine -- I should probably rehydrate after adding 'gardeners' to the list of people who go out in the midday sun."
Ilad begins to start after her toward the kitchen, and then thinks better of it. At least the kitchen is largely clean, although this morning's cereal bowl is still sitting in the sink, forgotten about. He angles for the table instead, favoring his bad leg as he moves for blond wooden chair that is his ordinary spot. Folding himself down into it, he lets his arm rest across the table before him; it is a fairly good angle on the kitchen from this his makeshift dining room, anyway. "I don't really like cauliflower," he comes out with at length. "I suppose that does not make it /offensive/ as such." He adds, "There should be a good half of a flat of water bottles on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator."
"It could be -personally- offensive," Eshana suggests, after a nod and murmured thanks for the directions to the water. Her immediate goal is the sink, however, where she sets the cereal bowl out of the way and commences vegetable washing activities. "You could even swear a vendetta against it. Although that might be giving cauliflower more attention than it really requires."
Ilad watches Eshana wash the vegetables with a kind of thoughtful tilt to his head, like if she hadn't done so he wouldn't have thought to. Rubbing his knuckles along the curve of his jaw, he murmurs a low, "Indeed. Overkill."
"Short of a tragic accident caused by an overturned truckload of cauliflower, anyways." Scrub, scrub, scrub. Although the planter boxes may be as organic and awesome as any California hippy could wish, there's still dirt collecting in the bottom of the sink. Eshana sets the veggies aside in a neat row as she works her way through them, and reflects that "It wouldn't be the strangest thing to encounter in this line of work."
"I suppose that it would not," Ilad agrees with mild humor, settling himself against the brace of his arm resting against the table's surface. "Vehicle accidents, regardless of their cargo, barely rate, I would think."
"Depends on the vehicle, I'd suggest," says Eshana, as she pats dry the last tomato and begins to make sure the eggplant meets her standards. "I mean, we didn't manage an -accident- with the zeppelin my team, um, liberated. But still."
"A fair point," Ilad acknowledges, with a faint crimp of his mouth. "Among the stranger, that."
"I'm still not entirely sure what to do with it," Eshana admits, working her way through the vegetables with an efficiency that lends credence to her claims of teenaged Eshanas trundling to and from the veggie patch. "I mean, worst case we ignore it and let Singapore keep it after they're done their investigation."
Knuckles curling under the neat scruff of his beard, Ilad sits quietly for a moment, consideringly. "Well," he says, "and if not Singapore, what, then?"
"Singapore is keeping it as evidence for prosecution," Eshana muses. "Interpol would probably like it for similar reasons. -I- posed as a CSIS agent, so for all I know the Canadian government would like to add a cushy zeppelin to their fleet. The, ah, former owners were Americans. So..." A hand, holding a carrot, sweeps gently. "Possibly it's more the question of who -doen't- want it?"
"Well," Ilad says after a muted pause, sitting a little straighter in his seat away from the table. "I don't know what /I/ would do with a zeppelin. I do not think it would be a subtle thing to moor here, either."
"No, not really. And we don't have any trained airship pilots, either," Eshana reflects with a small smile. She snags a bottle of water at last, and inclines her head to silently query after Ilad's needs on the hydration front. "I suppose it's either let it stay, or take up a career as an air pirate."
Ilad opens a hand and murmurs, "Please," as she goes after the water. Settling himself back against the chair, he says, "Without such a pilot, I imagine our options as pirates would be limited."
Eshana even hand-delivers the water, before peeking about to see where she can perch and sip her own. "Well," she says. "I guess that's a deficiency in our recruiting criteria."
There are other chairs at the table, although curiously, none of them match the blond wood of the one in which Ilad sits. He cracks the seal of the bottle, twisting the cap up to sip from its mouth, and arches his eyebrows with a faint quirk of humor at the corner of his mouth. "I'm sure a planned one," he says.
"I would love," says Eshana, eyes bright. "To be the fly on the wall at the meeting where they decided -that-."
"Mmhmm," Ilad says, with the burr of his chuckle buried in the sound. He drinks a little more from his bottle, and then exhales a sigh as he sets it back down on the table, glancing across his living room toward the glow of summer beyond his windows. "How the idea for us was formed ... in all its particulars," he says. "It must have been a highly interesting series of meetings."
Eshana sips her water with assiduous care, but still manages a crooked smile. "No doubt," she agrees. "And their test cases... I am going to have to make a point to check in in fifty years and do a freedom of information request," she decides.
Ilad arches his eyebrows at her. "Are there such limits on classified material here?" he asks.
"Well, I have a feeling just asking right -now- would run me into a wall of Need To Know and not needing," Eshana explains, lips twitching.
"Mm." Ilad's mouth quirks answer. "There are some secrets a nation would rather chew broken glass than reveal, passage of time or no, I think. But perhaps we are not one of them. Considering our enemy, and how likely it is that the secret will keep..." He turns his hand, and drums his fingertips lightly against the curve of the bottle.
"Mmph," says Eshana with a grimace and a sip of her water. "True enough. And I suppose they could always censor out any references to other agencies we aren't cleared to know about."
Ilad murmurs something under his breath, and smiles as he closes his eyes, head dipping. "How many do you suppose there could be out there?"
"Oh, at least fourteen," Eshana answers, quick and deadpan and with a grave nod of her head. "One has trained assassin monkeys."
Ilad sighs a low, "Of course. Naturally." His sobriety answers her deadpan, and he tips his head to her in inclination, his mouth held still.
"I think we are probably fairly unique," Eshana answers more seriously. "But I do think that any meetings surrounding our genesis would, at the level that Carpenter must operate at, also touch on what other branches of the parent organization are doing, and a lot of information that might be operationally sensitive."
"Mm." Ilad looks faintly uncomfortable for a moment, a fleeting hint of an inner disquiet that he swallows with his next sip of chilled water. He says, "I suppose."
"On the other hand," says Eshana, studying that discomfort as she speaks. "I haven't asked, so I can't -know- the answer would be 'no' or 'not now'."
Ilad smiles very slightly. "Not the most forthcoming group of people, though," he says, "this ... government."
"No... which I won't pretend has never given me pause," Eshana admits with a crook of her lips and a sip of her water. "Checks and balances must exist, because there's no way an intelligence apparatus as large as this country's runs solely on everyone's individual morality... but they're awfully hidden ones."
Ilad cants his head and sits in silence for a long moment afterwards. Dark eyes focused on her face for a beat or so, he looks away to once more contemplate his windows and the view beyond them. He exhales a low sigh past his lips, and says nothing.
Silence from Eshana, thoughtful and measured, as more of her water disappears. Eventually, a wry little smile worms its way to her lips. "I think," she says, "If we go too much farther down this particular conversational path we might risk getting as depressed as that tomato."
"Perhaps," Ilad answers, tone light with his mild acknowledgment.
"I'll let you know what sort of answer I get back, though," Eshana does offer, and caps her water bottle with a twist of a palm. "It'll be something to do. I think I may have caught the field operative bug after all -- Analysis seems routine all of a sudden."
Ilad smiles, a quick flash of an expression that warms a glint in his dark eyes. "Indeed," he says. "I often wondered at how those in the hub did not tire of their noses to that grindstone. I would already be out there again, if not for -- ah, this." He trails fingertips down over his thigh, and adds in a tone of admission, "And some uncertainty as to my next field goal, true."
"We are often quite reactionary in our responses," Eshana muses. "It can make it hard to plan ahead. Although I can think of a few previous encounters that could use some follow-up. Maybe you can celebrate a healed leg with one of them?"
Arching his eyebrows at her, Ilad cants his head with a query in his eye.
"Well," says Eshana with a purse of her lips. "There's that flock of people from the Morada who melted into the Nicaraguan woods, for one." A finger lifts to signify it and is joined by another. "Personally, I'd love to make sure that Dr. Batukhan is getting the supplies we promised, but Carpenter wasn't very informative when Dr. Keane asked after it. But the escapees, that's probably easier to justify our looking into."
"I could comb a sweating jungle with my bare hands," Ilad answers with a low, dry edge ghostly in his quiet voice, "after a trail months old. But I fear it would not be very useful of me." He glances aside, mouth twisting.
"Ah," says Eshana, with a hint of a sparkle in her eyes. "But you see, that's what your friendly Analysis department is for. Groups on the move, especially ones potentially unfamiliar with this world, leave signs of their passage in other ways too. So if we can dig up some directions, then it's not the jungle any more."
"Mm." Ilad shakes his head slightly. "Find me a path, perhaps, and I will walk it, Eshana. Or limp it, I suppose," he adds blandly, looking ceilingward in a flicker of his gaze.
"Well, by the time there's a path, you'll probably be past the limping stage," Eshana points out, but with a little smile to say that she's not -totally- rozzing the joke. "Feel free to drop by Analysis if you want to see how we track it some time. There's usually -someone- in there being impatient at us."
"Ah, well." Ilad opens his hands. "Patience is hard to come by, hm?"
"Well, when the people you're waiting on do things like type frantically into their computer and then go play ping-pong for a half hour until it's done searching..." Eshana trails off with a look not entirely unsympathetic. "I suppose it doesn't help. Although now I think the Hub needs a ping-pong table."
Ilad takes a long swallow from his water bottle and then tips his head against the plastic, smile slight and wry but lingering. "Very practical," he murmurs.
"I'll just have to see where space can be made," Eshana reflects, and rises from the seat that she totally perched on earlier, even if I forgot to pose about it. "In the meantime, I have some vegetables to distribute, but I'll let you know what sort of results I get."
"Thank you," Ilad says, with a slight inclination of his head in her direction. Despite his cultural training, he does not rise to show her out, but sits framing his water bottle in his hands at the table, and smiles slightly.
Eshana gives him a little half-bow half-namaste in farewell, water bottle between her palms and a crooked smile tipped his way. "Heal quickly," she bids, and then flutters out and on her way.
Roof gardening and collateral damage.