The Tiara
“Of course, Madam President,” Chaplin replied, hesitantly. “I will wait.” He handed the receiver back to the secretary who took it away, leaving him outside the door to the office. He patted at the knee of his black slacks, tapping his foot inside his sneaker, noting the whispering staff down the hall from the corner of his eye. They were talking about him. Of course they were. The whole world was talking about him. When he had dreamed of being known for his role in science as a kid, this wasn’t quite what he had had in mind.
“Mr. Chaplin.” President Eve Collins said, striding down the hall with her hand extended to shake as her entourage clustered around her.
He took her hand, his voice stuck in his parched throat. He nodded his greeting, helplessly as she directed, “This way, if you would.”
The doors were closed behind them, leaving Collins, Chaplin, and Collins’ secretary Gary Bernstein in the room.
“I think you need to talk and talk fast, Mr. Chaplin,” the president said, sitting behind her desk.
“There was no way I could have known this would happen—you have to believe that.”
“I don’t think it really matters what I believe. I need the facts. Start.”
“It was found in a desk drawer of Dr. Lantus. There was no record of it, nothing. We just thought it was something of his that no one claimed after he died. We put it for sale as a joke on Ebay—“ he choked on his breath as he realized his dig. The joke had been that NASA wasn’t funded enough, and the money raised from the item was to help their departments.
“I’m familiar,” she replied dryly as Bernstein handed her a cup of coffee before passing Chaplin one. “But you are the one who put it up for sale?”
“Well, yeah. I didn’t know what it was—none of us did. It looked like some cheap tiara from a party store.”
“It didn’t occur to you to have it examined?”
“With all due respect, Madam President, why would we? The thing was light, the gems looked gaudy and plastic.”
“Then why not throw it away?”
“It was a joke, just something to do on a Friday evening.”
“The crazy life of scientists,” Bernstein replied.
“When you’ve been in a lab all day staring at numbers, I assure you, it’s a riot,” Chaplin responded.
“I don’t care if you put bottles of champagne up your asses for a laugh. I need to know about this damn crown,” Collins snapped.
“That’s all I know. The next thing I heard was that the woman had been, well, exploded. I don’t know what happened. I just heard there were bits of her found, and her cats were all dead or something, and I had some secret service after my team because of this crown. That’s all I know.”
He tapped his toe inside his shoe more vigorously as the heat of the air conditioned office produced beads of wet down his face.
She leaned back in her leather chair, coffee cup handle in one hand and its saucer in the other, the steam washing over her lightly made-up face. Her chin tilted down, her eyes bore into him, searching him for discrepancies.
“You’ve been briefed since?” she asked finally.
“I have.”
“You know about the diplomacies that are failing?”
“I know that one of the Gorgèoan soldiers is being held by us in exchange of an apology for the death of the woman who bought the tiara.”
“That tiara was sacred and historic to the Gorgèoasite people,” she corrected. “It was hidden with Dr. Lantus, and he was meant to put it in a secure place. Unfortunately, he was killed before he could effectively do so. It wasn’t the Gorgèoasites who killed him either—“
“Excuse me, Madam President. But Lantus had a heart attack,” Chaplin said. “He wasn’t killed.”
“It wasn’t the Gorgèoasites who killed him,” she repeated, firmly, challenging another correction. “Have you heard of the Antelaens? They’ve been at war with the Gorgèoasites for some amount of time in their own galaxy. You know they sought our help for the purpose of hiding this thing, right?”
“I knew they made contact with us,” Chaplin replied slowly. He wasn’t a highly-ranked scientist. His job was to interpret numbers, point a telescope at the sky. It was somewhat the grunt work of astrophysics. “I don’t think I’m qualified to have any other information. And even what I do know is more than the civilian clearance.”
“Well congratulations, you’re about to know more extremely classified information. Because you idiots sold the damn thing online, the information was picked up by the Antelaens, and they were the ones who took it, killing the woman.”
“But wait,” Chaplin stopped her again. “Why do we have one of the Gorgèoasites soldiers if it was their opposition who caused us offense?”
“Leverage,” Collins replied simply. “There is a very high morality among the Gorgèoasites. Do you know anything about their culture?” He shook his head. “They have a very low birth rate, and so every life they have is extremely valuable to them. While their pride has been offended enough that they would like to destroy us entirely, they won’t as long as we have a few of their people on this planet. We are currently at a standstill with them. If anything happens to our people by their hand, then their people die. That simple.”
“So why am I here?” Chaplin chose his words cautiously, slowly. “Why do I need to know any of this?”
“Aside from being held responsible for your idiocy, knowing the weight of your actions, you are going to be the one to meet the Antelaeons and act as peace-maker between the two.”
Chaplin chortled through his nose, ungracefully splaying mucus onto the desk next to his untouched coffee. His hand flew to his face, embarrassed. “Excuse me?” he asked through his fingers as Bernstein passed him a napkin.
“You’ll be brought up to speed in the morning. That is all, Mr. Chaplin,” President Collins replied, standing from behind her desk and putting out a hand. “Gary will see you out.”
Confusion swirled around him as he mimicked the president’s motions, and allowed the secretary to escort him out of the office. The human race was between two intergalactic races at war with another, and all because he wanted to have an inside joke about NASA’s federal funding.
“And remember, Chaplin,” Collins said as he was about through the door. “the fate of our world depends on you.”
© 2017 by N. J. Thompson, Nicola Thompson, & AuthorNJThompson. All rights reserved.