tent and ask two soldiers something and dreamily march up to
him afterwards and stand upright in front him.
“ Malone wants to see you now!” he said
firmly, and saluted, and Cameron ignored it and rolled over and sat
on the edge of the bed, feeling drowsy.
Cameron watched him march away and realized
he had done something again, and grabbed a bottle of whisky from
beside his bed and downed some to try to wake him, and shifted to
the door!
Once in Malone’s tent he realized that he was
only slightly annoyed this time, and he examined Cameron’s face and
tried not to look surprised about something, and suddenly poured a
drink, examined his face from the side of his eyes and gasped, and
stopped himself asking him something and looked away.
“ Sit down!” Malone ordered, clearly
annoyed now.
Cameron realized he never had a clue what he
wanted him for.
“ Cameron!” Malone eventually whispered
annoyed. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Malone’s staring eyes penetrated deep into
his brain trying to grasp his thoughts and looked away.
“ Have I done something!” he inquired,
not knowing what it was he meant.
“ There has been a complaint about you
again!” he announced loudly, studying him again, seeing if he would
react. “This time it’s authentic!”
“ What about?” he gasped, wondering who
would complain about soldiers and to them, and he realized that the
last complaint might have been made up by him.
“ Some people don’t like you,
Cameron!”
Cameron was humiliated and tried to get what
he was going on about and realized he should ask the complainers to
tell him and he would try to solve the problem, and grasp what they
were going on about! People should stop complaining about nothing,
and things they never liked the look of and save it for real
things!
He wondered if he could believe their
complaint as he was sure they were talking utter rubbish!
Malone himself must have more people
complaining of him than anyone, especially from the soldiers, and
from the things he was responsible for, and he wondered what the
hell he was up to.
“ The people of this country could do
without you!”
He stared deep in his eyes again, and looked
away disappointed.
“ Did you go to the pub last night and
get drunk?” he curiously asked, calming himself.
“ Yeah!” he replied annoyed, and even
more annoyed at his persistence in not saying anything. “There were
hundreds of people drunk, lying in bushes, and vomiting all over
the pavement, and throwing beer cans! The place was totally covered
with people drinking and partying, and there were wild orgies in
rooms!”
“ Is that all! What else was there? Was
there physical action?”
“ Physical action! Yeah! There was this
woman playing with her crotch doing a striptease!”
“ That
sounds fun! What else?”
“ She
gently rubbed her hands rhythmically across her thighs, sensually
rubbing oil into her skin, and loosened his pants and pulled them
to her knees and started massaging herself!”
“ Rubbing
oil!” Malone moaned. “What next?”
“ She
continued on going ...”
“ But what
the hell has it to do with what I’m talking about ...!” Malone
shouted, furiously.
“ Nothing
then!”
“ Cameron!
This country needs you! And not for you to hang about perverted
bars!”
“ What did
you want to know if I was there for then?”
“ I was
checking if you were there! There was a complaint about you having
a fight with a disabled pensioner and dragging him out the bar and
rolling him about in puddles ...!”
“ That’s
not what happened!”
“ You
admit to throwing him about?”
“ Yes!”
“ Apparently Cameron ... You’re a menace to civilization! I
ought to do something about you!”
“ What
help me clean my head up!”
Malone bent
over holding his head, but only for seconds, and straightened up
firmly, and Cameron realized he had put his foot in it again.
“ So
you’ve lost your memory! Well, this time I’ll
The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance