3rd World Products, Book 17 (8 page)

“You’re welcome.”

Chapter Six

About ten minutes later, Lori pinged me. When I answered, she said, “I’m going back home after all. My cousin Margaret fell off the back porch fifteen minutes ago. She’s in the emergency room and she wants to see me.”

“Okay. You know where to find me.”

Lori was silent for a moment, then said, “This is for real, Ed. It isn’t some kind of excuse.”

Yeah, and..?

With a mental shrug, I answered, “I said, ‘okay’, Lori.”

She snapped, “That’s it? Okay?”

I replied, “Then make it ‘goodbye’ or something. You have a reason to leave. What do you want to hear?”

Lori almost muttered, “Oh, never mind.”

“Yes, ma’am, ma’am. Never-minding now, ma’am. Leave your gear if you want to come back and finish your weekend.”

“No, I can’t count on that.”

Whatever. I sipped coffee and zapped another satellite. Lori came outside with her backpack and linked to share my probe briefly.

She said, “I still can’t believe we’re doing that.”

“Try a little harder. And think about what to do with them. I was going to make a couple of big donuts and spin them up to half a gee after I give them a couple of hatches each.”

Lori shrugged. “That sounds good.” She called up a flitter, tossed her bag aboard, and said, “Well, I guess I’ll get going.”

Standing up for our awkward moment, I grinningly asked, “You don’t want me to put the lotion on first?”

She gave me a sidelong look, then chuckled, “Oh, why not? Another few minutes here won’t matter, right?”

Reaching for the bottle, I agreed, “Probably not.”

Lori again took off her t-shirt and I smeared her shoulders and back. When I snapped the bottle shut, she quickly stepped away and grinningly said, “You aren’t wiping your hands on my butt again.”

In fact, I hadn’t planned to, but I snapped my fingers in a gesture of mock frustration and said, “You know me too well, ma’am.”

She put on her t-shirt and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then said, “Later, Ed. If I can get loose, I’ll come back.”

“Sounds good. Bye, Lori.”

Hopping aboard her flitter, she lifted away. I carried the throat spray, lotion, and my coffee into the house and gave a moment’s thought to the evening ahead. To the weekend ahead, really. I had not one damned thing to do that couldn’t wait. I pinged Tanya through her board’s control disk.

When she answered, I said, “Hi, there. Lori had to go back to Arizona. Know any good clubs in Ocala?”

“Clubs?”

“Yeah, you know… Music. Booze. No rap, no country. We’ll put Marie on a board of her own and teach her to fly it on the way.”

“Ed, it takes a lot more than a short hop to…”

I interrupted, “No sweat. It’ll save taking a car tonight and we can teach her the rest over the weekend.”

After a brief hesitation, she said, “Uh… just a minute. I’ll ask her.”

It was more than a minute, but less than three. Marie came on and asked, “What about the money?”

“Can I trust you for it?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to your friend Lori?”

“I got to thinking about you and threw her out.”

“Highly unlikely. Tanya said she went back to Arizona. Why?”

“A visiting relative in an emergency room.”

After a brief pause, she asked, “Do we have to go to a club? I think I’d rather learn to fly while I’m sober.”

I sighed, “Killjoy. But okay, I guess. I was just looking for a reason to get out of the house. Be there shortly.”

Dropping the link, I made a fresh coffee and spiffed up a bit, then summoned Galatea in two-seat mode and headed for Ocala. I had Galatea make a scooterboard on the way and park above the building after dropping me in front of Tanya’s door.

When I rang the door bell, Marie opened the door. She stood about five-seven or eight and wore jeans, sneakers, and a light blue sleeveless blouse. Brown hair and eyes, just as long ago, and it was very obvious she’d been working out to get rid of all that time in a hospital bed. While not bulging with muscles, her arms looked almost as toned as Toni’s.

My cursory inspection of her ended at her face. Our eyes met and seemed to lock onto each other for a time, then she stood aside and gestured me into the apartment. I heard noises from the bathroom and noted that the blue shower curtain we’d put across the patio door had been replaced by curtains like those on the front windows.

Closing the door, Marie said, “Tanya will be right out.” She turned to face me and said, “Hello, Ed. It’s been quite a while. I’m not counting your clinic visit. I wasn’t really me then.”

Trying to look enlightened, I nodded. “Well, then, yes, it’s been quite a while. But you’re looking damned good, ma’am.”

“Getting all new skin will do that. You should try it.” Closing her eyes in a wince, she added, “
Damn
. Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound the way it did. I just meant it makes for one hell of a face lift.”

Peering at me, she said, “But you don’t look anything like sixty, either. What’s your secret?”

“Nanobots, same as you.”

Apparently at a loss for words for the moment, Marie glanced at my mug and asked, “What’s in that? Coffee?”

“Yup.”

“Want to top it up while we’re here?”

“You bet.” I headed for the pot and drank my coffee down a bit before I poured the brewed coffee through the half-inch hole.

Watching my hands, she said, “You’re as steady as ever. Why not take the lid off?”

“No need.” Putting the pot back, I faced her again and said, “Marie, I know why you hated me and I did what I could about it. No hard feelings here. No reason for any awkwardness.”

Meeting my gaze for a moment, she nodded. “Okay. Why’d you tell Tanya about Leipzig?”

“Will and Connie told her first. I just clarified.”

“And you haven’t spoken with them? Really?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “No contact.”

Turning, she went to the kitchen table and sat down, then said, “They haven’t contacted me, either. I’ve been wondering why.”

“You could call them.”

She shook her head. “I’ve tried. All I got was a machine. I left a message a month ago. No reply.”

I didn’t say, ‘
Maybe because they remember you as a bitch on wheels
‘. Instead, I said, “Oh, well. Their loss,” and sat down across the table from her. She regarded me thoughtfully as I sipped coffee.

Tanya emerged from the bathroom and cheerily said, “Oh, good! You haven’t killed each other yet!”

Marie wryly replied, “It might not come to that. He seems more reasonable than I remembered.”

Tanya chuckled and said, “Or maybe you are. He told me you had a rep for being difficult.”

Glancing at me, Marie asked archly, “Did he really?”

Nodding, I agreed, “Oh, yes, he really did. I told her all your secrets, Batgirl. Even about the moped.”

Looking slightly startled, Marie said, “I haven’t even
thought
about that thing in
ages
. I wonder what happened to it? I left it in the rear office. I never did bother to turn in the tags.”

I almost offered to look it up, then thought better of it. Instead, I used my core to check records and found no green tag registrations for the moped later than Marie’s. It had been found and logged as abandoned personal property.

The MPs had recalled the tags, then it sat for a year in a corner of the motor pool until one of the MPs filed a bill of sale for it as a parts vehicle under an obscure Army Regulation. Cute trick. I almost dropped the matter there, but something made me check for the serial number in German files.

Lo and behold, the moped turned up less than a month later with a German registration. A used vehicle dealer in Kaiserslautern had filed for a new title and sold it. The moped was still tagged by a family in Einsiedlerhof in 1998, when it had been sold to a retro-style Italian restaurant in Ramstein. It had figured prominently in several ads and ended up on display in the restaurant’s small lobby.

When I chuckled, Tanya asked, “What?”

“I found her moped.”

I put up a screen and showed them the info trail and the fate of Marie’s moped. The ladies chuckled their way through the info and the last few pictures, then Marie turned to me.

“This is all very wonderful, of course, but exactly how did you do that?”

Tanya growled softly, “Mom…”

“No,” I said, “It’s all right. We’re practically starting over from scratch and she needs to know these things before she can be comfortable around me.”

Looking at Marie, I said, “I’m hooked into an Amaran computer. I have field implants here,” I touched the area behind my left ear, “And I can use fields like an AI.”

To demonstrate, I sent an emerald green tendril to Tanya. She grinningly patted the end of it like a playful pet as it hovered in front of her, then I sent it to hover in front of Marie. Eyeing the tendril in about the same manner as a cobra, Marie tentatively reached to touch it, then pushed it from side to side.

She asked, “What does it do?”

“Pretty much anything. Lift, carry, heat, cool.” I sent it into the other room to retrieve a purse and bring it to the table, then had it become gray with a bright white tip. “I’m never without a flashlight, either. They do all kinds of stuff.”

“They? You have more than one?”

“As many as I need.” I used the tendril to create a dome over the purse and said, “Try to touch the purse.”

Marie reached for it and couldn’t put her hand through the field. She stood up and tried harder, then tried to pry the dome away from the table. No luck. Reaching behind herself, she produced a folding knife, flicked it open in a gesture that startled Tanya, and tried to slide the blade under the dome. Nope. When she stopped trying, I made the dome vanish. Marie reached to touch the purse and seemed thoughtful for a time before she spoke.

“You’ve learned some new tricks, I’ll give you that.”

“Yup. Ready to meet your new scooterboard?”

“I suppose so.”

Silently asking Galatea to send the board down, I opened the glass back door and held the curtain open. The apparent slab of metal entered the kitchen and stopped near me.

I directed it to hover in front of Marie and said, “Touch it so it can lock onto your DNA.”

She glanced at Tanya, who nodded, then placed a hand on the board matrix and studied it briefly. Looking at me, she said, “This doesn’t look anything like Tanya’s board.”

“There’s a trick to it. See that hexagonal disk? Take it out of its holder, put it on your arm, and tell it to attach itself there.”

Marie gave me a fisheye, then glanced at Tanya again.

Tanya said, “That’s exactly how it works, Mom, but you can just think it; you don’t have to actually say the words.”

A few seconds passed in silence, then the disk spread out and bonded with Marie’s arm. She looked a bit alarmed, but Tanya grinningly held her arm out to show her own disk.

“Tanya,” I said, “Show her how to call up a board, too.”

Giving me an ‘are you sure?’ sort of look, she nonetheless turned to her mother and began coaching. I put up a screen and sat down to check email and messages as the ladies conferred. A board soon appeared, then a scooter. When Marie sat on it, Tanya cautioned her about trying to make it move inside the apartment.

Marie got off, laughed, and walked around it once, then sat on it and laughed again. “You brought me a scooter. Just like old times.” Looking at me, she added, “Sort of. What are you doing?”

“Checking email. Waiting for you ladies to decide it’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“To go outside, ma’am. Got everything you need?”

Tanya grinned and Marie goggled at me briefly as she laughed, “How the
hell
would I know? What’ll I need?”

I shrugged. “Just courage, I guess, but you always had that covered pretty well. Turn your scooter off.”

“Why?”

“Because you can. And because you can call it up again outside, which means you won’t have to horse it through the doorway. Let me get a refill and we’ll go play.”

The scooter disappeared and Marie asked, “Where did it go?”

Tanya said, “Feel above your head,” and Marie’s questing hands collided gently with the matrix she couldn’t see.

As I refilled my mug the ladies continued their confab, but I also heard a couple of whispers. Glancing at the reflection of the toaster on the sink counter, I saw Marie lean close to Tanya and say something very quietly. Tanya grinned and nodded. Hm.

As I headed for the front door, Marie asked, “Wouldn’t it be better to go out the back way?”

Opening the door, I asked, “Why? Seems likely everybody here’s seen Tanya’s board. Some have seen mine. What’s one more?”

She gave me an ‘uh-huh’ sort of look as she stepped outside. I called up my board and Tanya called up hers, but Marie opted for a scooter. I gave her a fisheye, but said nothing.

Marie asked, “You have a problem with me easing into things?”

“Nope. This isn’t a challenge. Do it your way for now.”

Once upon a time she’d have snapped back, “You know I will,” or something similar. Instead, she just nodded and turned her attention to the scooter. It changed from translucent gray to a bright red. Marie grinned and looked at Tanya, who grinned back.

I looked down at my board and realized I’d never bothered with coloring it other than to demo field coloring for someone else. Turning my board a deep emerald green seemed to startle Tanya, but Marie’s grin got a bit bigger. Tanya seemed to give things some thought, then her board turned a bright shade of blue.

A couple of moments passed, then Marie’s scooter moved forward. She gained a bit of speed, then leaned left and right tentatively a few times as if testing her sense of things. At the sidewalk, she began an arc that became a circle, then a figure-eight. After some time flitting around the yard, she returned to the porch.

She said, “There are so many things I could say right now, but they all sound too silly in my head. So I’ll just say thanks again, Ed.”

“Then I’ll just say ‘you’re welcome’, Marie. You seem to be a quick study. Think you have a handle on it yet?”