The man pushing the tea cart is in his early twenties, with black hair and dark complexion suggestive of India. He wears his tan Customs uniform the way another man might wear an expensive italian suit - it appears as if the two were made to go together. The nametag pinned neatly above his left breast pocket reads "Rajpal".
"Ah, good morning, and welcome to Al Amarja!" he says, his melodious accent confirming what his physical appearance implied. "I thought you might be wet and cold after your walk across the runways, so I brought you something warm to drink, and some towels so you could at least dry off. We are just sorting everything out in the office right at the moment, so it will be a few minutes before any of you are called. It has been quite a night, yes, quite... a... night! What with your flight being so late you landed just behind a Turkish Airlines flight, so we are still scrambling to get everybody sorted out." He pauses a moment and looks around at the group, then motions towards the tea tray. "Please... eat, drink, dry off!"
Kitty looks to Rajpal, looks back at the group and then walks over to the cart. Taking a towel from the cart, she quickly pats her clothes off and then wraps her hair up in the towel. "Thank you kindly, Sir." She then looks at the contents of the tray and walks away.
The young man by the donut cart laughs happily at Leo's antics. "Oh my, I have never seen anyone eat donuts in quite that way before, and believe me I see a LOT of people eat donuts here at C&I. Now then, if you will excuse me, I will go back to check on the possibility of getting you all processed and out of here." He turns back to the wall, looks intently at it for a moment, then mutters something under his breath in a foreign language. Then he walks over to the wall and begins feeling along its surface.
Kitty watches Leo intently as he performs. As the cart is taken away, she also watches Rajpal intently; when he swears, her darting eyes focus on the wall in front of him.
Sam looks at the food cart suspiciously. After several people have taken condiments he approaches and takes a towel, wiping off whatever excess water his garments haven't yet absorbed. "Any idea how long we'll be here?" he asks.
"Rajpal", who is still examining the wall intently, stops muttering
as Sam approaches and turns to smile at him. It's a nice smile, and
appears completely sincere. "Well, sir," he says cheerfully, " I
would guess that it would be no more than fifteen minutes or so before
things are all sorted out. It always takes longer for the first time
visitors. Now," he continues, bowing slightly before turning back
to the wall, "I really must find the door."
Upon exiting the aircraft they have been confronted by about a dozen heavily armed security goons who brandished automatic weapons in their general direction, herded the travelers all together in the rain, screamed orders at them, confiscated their arry-on luggage, and made them run through the rain for a quarter of a mile to get to the airport terminal. The crazed security goons with the submachine guns herded them all inside an impossibly shaped building, like cattle into a slaughter pen. Since then, the four stranded travelers have spent their time since arrival mingled in with a crowd that seems to consist primarily of Turkish manual laborers who never wash and live on a diet of goat cheese and garbanzo beans. All of them are screaming at the top of their lungs trying to get someone to look at their passport, or maybe they are just trying to get out of this insane building. The four stragglers are all quickly singled out as not fitting in with this group by alert Customs and Immigration Agents, who demand to see everyone's passport, scrutinize it for a period of time approximating the half life of one of those weird elements particle physicists make in cyclotrons, and then in turn scream at the top of their lungs at the travelers because "You are in the wrong place and now we have to get someone to take you to the right place and this is very annoying because we are VERY busy and you, in your infinite stupidity, have now just made MORE work for us and if you really wanted to make someone's life miserable why the fuck couldn't you just jump off a high rise apartment building of wherever the hell you come from and land on someone's pet pomeranian and spare us the trouble of having to deal with you at all!"
At some point in the midst of this verbal tirade just after the strays consider killing the C&I worker who is bombarding them with spittle and epithets but decide not to due to the presence of the aforementioned goons with submachine guns, the travelers do happen to mention the questionnaires they have. This causes an instant change in attitude on the part of almost anyone they talk to (unless they try talking to one of the Turkish manual laborers, who really doesn't care, and is much more interested in finding some really good goat cheese anyway) and they are immediately whisked out of the room by a very polite security goon who doesn't point his or her submachine gun at anyone even once (well, ok, maybe once), and are brought together with three other people escorted by three other polite security goons, one of whom accompanies everyone to an elevator and motions the tourists inside. They get in and the doors close.
It's around 2:45 am.
"TATA!" she squeals.
By the time this shocking tableau has finished, the others are out of the elevator and the door has disappeared.
One of the new inhabitants of the room seems to be handling the automatic weapon and brusque manner of the Peace Force officer with aplomb, even nonchalance - this is almost indetectable, though, since the rain and the run have more or less turned him into a shell-shocked war crime victim. He pours himself a cup of coffee and mumbles into it distractedly for a moment.
His double-breasted black suit with the dark overcoat is terribly soaked. His white shirt and silk tie are a useless mess. His pepper-grey hair dangles limply across his face and glasses. Perhaps the rich have no immunity to rain after all, despite television. Or, more likely, he's not that rich. He mops halfheartedly at his clothes with a towel.
Yet another section of the wall opens near where Rajpal is fiddling, and the sounds of a busy office once again flood the room. This time they are accompanied by a loud voice that rasps as only that of an overweight smoker or advanced lung cancer patient can rasp. The accent, while clearly hindi, is lacking in any of the pleasant qualities that made Rajpal's voice enjoyable to listen to.
"Dinesh, you stupid madar choud! Stop fucking around and get back to work! Haram zadah, eeder ao, NOW! And I mean NOW, you stupid little ma ki chut!!"
Dinesh Rajpal freezes at the sound of the voice, and blanches at whatever is said. He glances hastily back at the group in the room, says "Excuse me, I must return to work. Someone will be with you presently," and darts through the door, which closes behind him.
Shivering, pulling her wet clothes closer to her frail, thin frame, a woman steps off the elevator, her brown hair hanging unkempt into her face. She looks as if she could be quite pretty, but not now. Her face is pale, gaunt, drawn; her unfocused blue eyes glint dully in the room’s light as she staggers dazedly off to the side of the room.
By now, gravity has brought the little girl which had so vehemently thrown herself on Sam down to the floor, where she immediately took a stranglehold on his legs in an unbreakable grip. From this distance, the others are able to get a better look at her. She stands at about 3'6" weighing maybe 50 lbs. Her hair, still drenched with the rain from the runway, goes down to about shoulder length and possesses a deep black color as do her eyes. This in turn contrasts with her very fair skin. It is apparent she hasn't seen much of the sun for quite some time.
However, two elements are most vivid. One is a small, soft, ragged brown ball wedged between the girl and Sam. After releasing a prodigious amount of water back onto Sam's pants legs, it eventually falls to the floor and returns to its natural bear shape, a bear shape which has apparently seen much better days but has since suffered the ravages of time and years of the tender mercies of a small child, and more to the point, this small child.
The second feature is the prodigious quantity, speed and volume of unintelligible noise coming from the child's lungs. From the first leap, she has not ceased speaking in a manner which would resemble a Chipmunks album produced for foreign markets played at 78 RPM, and most probably after one had consumed a large pile of hallucinogens. The girl continues emitting the sounds for thirty seconds straight, pauses for a deep breath, and continues right where she left off for at least five minutes. Which at 2:45 AM in a room with one chair at the airport is equivalent to six or seven months.
Those in the room with experience in the Roman languages could almost make some sense of the high-pitched squeals, with the words "Tata, "Fericita" and "Tedi" most apparent as they came out the most frequently.
Kitty yawns from being up so long, looks to the elevator which brought in the newcomers. She looks back to her fellow ravelers and tells them, "My name is Kaila, of the US Military. Are you here on business or vacation?" quietly trying to start chit-chat to pass the time away until they actually are processed. Her voice definitely being drowned out by the constant chatter of the child that has just entered the room. "Excuse me, miss," says Kitty to the newly arrived woman, "here's a towel... You just missed a cart of them... Err, umm, it's still kinda damp... but it might help a little."
Leo, getting close to the limits of both available space in the crowded room, and the donuts' inherent crumbliness, has to restrain his juggling impulses. He snatches the remains of his snack from the air, and starts nibbling on what's left rather like a very elongated squirrel, holding his hoard close to his body and bringing tiny crumbs to his mouth one by one.
One of the new arrivals, Levine, who has not introduced himself to anyone yet, is the dripping-wet fellow in the dark double-breasted suit with the pepper-grey hair and the wire-rimmed glasses. He is drying off and sipping his coffee and waiting dutifully for the Customs people to return. He examines his passport ruefully - the rain has ruined the section where other countries stamps are placed. Oh, well, there's plenty of room for more.
A section of the wall opens once again, and a middle aged woman in a tan C&I uniform enters. If Dinesh Rajpal wore his C&I uniform like an expensive suit, this woman wears hers more like the uniform of an SS officer. It is decorated with numerous pins and ribbons, something like those of a military officer save that they are awards for going five years without taking a sick day, working more than 2,000 hours of overtime without pay, 10- and 20-year pins, etc. The woman herself is the dark blue-black color of the African interior. Her hair is close-shaved, and she bears tribal scars on each cheek. Most notable, however, are her earlobes, which are stretched and elongated almost to shoulder-length, with heavy brass earrings. She carries a clipboard and a pencil tucked under one arm as if they were a riding crop.
She takes two steps into the room, then comes to a halt. Precisely two steps - no more, no less. Dark brown eyes sweep the room with all the intensity and force of an M-60 machinegun on full auto. She whips the clipboard up, but doesn't look at it.
"Mister Leo Barbeau," she says, her English as precise as that of a British middle-school grammar teacher. "Miz Ariel Black. Mister Samuel Trevor Dart. Please follow me. Have your passports out and ready." Without pause, she turns and reenters the office beyond the wall. The section of the wall begins to swing shut.
Leo starts moving as if he was going to somersault through the opening, but then his brain quickly nixes that reflex and Leo simply, if hurriedly, fells in step behind the martial-looking C&I officer. As the door starts to shut, he automatically tries to hold it open for the other tourists, then realises that local doors may be meaner than those he's used to. Gingerly, he withdraws his hand.
Eyes wide, Ariel looks around frantically, as if seeking an exit. She pulls her soaking clothes tighter around her emaciated frame, and moves slowly, hesitantly toward the doors.
The wall section swings shut behind Leo and Ariel. Silence descends once again on the waiting room.
To Be Continued...