Revolution World (4 page)

Max snorted. "We were obviously wrong. Even the weather here hates us. I swear the sun is actually brighter here than at home, not to mention broiling hot and baking the life out of everything. Seriously, it's nine in the evening and the sun only just went down. How can we live with that?"

"I admit that I am not optimistic," Seth replied.

Max sighed, but his hungry stomach caused him to rally bitterly. "I suppose must eat. Let us venture forth and let the angry and rude owners of this restaurant do their best to poison us."

Seth attempted a cheery smile. "You want to give up? Just because everyone else in this state seems to believe it's his or her personal duty to make us very sorry that we were so stupid as to come here? This could be where they hide all the nice people who like foreigners. After all, this diner was specifically recommended to us by the woman I've arranged to guide us around Ambrosia Springs."

They noticed a few old men had gathered at the dusty windows of the diner to stare out at them. Seth's smile faded under the suspicious squints of the locals.

Max rolled his eyes again and opened the door of the car, slipping his handheld into a pocket. "In that case, it's sure to kill us. Or keep us up all night wishing we were dead."

"Well, if that's the case, then we will know that this town doesn't want us here either and we can leave tomorrow," Seth replied equably.

This cheered Max up quite a bit. He entertained a brief fantasy of leaving Texas and getting home in time for a long weekend filled with fine wines and sophisticated company.

"Come on, boy, let's do this thing," Max replied as he stepped out into the new night.

Seth nonchalantly ignored the glares of the men inside. He promptly slammed the car door on his shirt. Why did this sort of thing always happen to him?

Max chuckled as Seth wrestled himself free. "That's why I don't let you borrow my clothes." Seth glowered at him as he tried to smooth out his torn shirt. He sucked on the thumb he'd jammed trying to free the shirt.

"I don't borrow your clothes because I don't want to look like a stuck up nancy boy," Seth muttered.

"You don't borrow my clothes because they look like rags on that scrawny scarecrow body of yours," Max replied with a grin. "Come on."

As they walked through the rusty door, the locals made no attempt to disperse from the windows. Seth half expected one wrinkled old man in overalls and a battered baseball cap to pull out a shotgun and start blasting away at them. A large, swarthy man in a cowboy hat wiped a froth of beer from his lips and asked with a thick Texas twang, "You boys get lost in that there fancy hovercar of yours? Because we'd be happy to give you directions back to Austin."

Seth could see Max was about to take the man up on that offer when a plump middle-aged woman erupted from the kitchen with a business-like smile on her face. She had the most improbable bouffant they'd ever seen. Max stared at it as she came bustling up.

"Y'all ain't from around here, that's for sure. Never seen skin that white in my life. Oh my goodness, I didn't mean to say that out loud. Anyway, what brings you out our way?" she asked breathlessly as she wiped off a menu.

"We are on our way to Ambrosia Springs, to see what we can see of this beautiful state," Seth smiled at her pleasantly.

Max seemed to be struck dumb by the storm cloud of hair bobbing above her as she walked. The waitress stared at him for a minute and then something must have clicked in her mind as her eyes went round.

"Oh!" she cried. "Oh my word! Y'all is those boys Miss Joanna said to look out for and here you are! Lordy, that woman knows everything. She runs the Chamber of Commerce and the Junior League and lord knows what else, you know. Well, here you are! My gracious, my heavens, well come sit down! My name's Bessy." She beamed at them as though they had performed a very impressive trick and then ushered them over to a table. Seth and Max shared a bewildered look as they followed in the wake of hurricane Bessy.

"Well, now, Miss Joanna said she'd recommended us to you and of course she would. I don't like to brag, but we do a fine dinner here," she said loudly over her shoulder as she conjured up a checkered tablecloth and sparkling clean silverware. "She said you were foreigners and we wanted to be extra-special nice to you."

This last part she seemed to direct more to the other patrons than to the two men themselves. Seth noticed the suspicious glares of the locals seemed to fade and the harsh silence was replaced by the gentle buzz of gossip.

Bessy burbled on as she produced glasses filled with some sort of drink, a cloth wrapped bundle of cornbread and a little tub of honey-sweetened butter. "My sister works for Miss Harmony at the Co-op. You know, the Floracopia Co-op? Those girls are mighty smart. Anyway, she said y'all was thinking about building some sort of computer factory or something right here in Ambrosia Springs? Wouldn't that be interesting! Well now, even if we are a little rural, we got the Co-op so we already got experience in living with you high-tech smart people and all."

Betsy could talk all day without stopping for breath. "Now I bet you are thinking you got nothing in common with them just because you all work with computers and they mess around with genes and plants and that DNA whatever. But what I'm saying is, we're used to all that crazy stuff here in Ambrosia Springs. Well of course, our little restaurant isn't quite in Ambrosia Springs, but we almost are, what with it being only five miles down the road and of course, nothing else for just miles and miles. And you know, I don't like to brag but even though people just don't get out too much these days, we do see a lot of folks here in our diner." She paused her monologue and patted her hair in a self-satisfied way.

Seth was content to wolf down cornbread and honey butter while she talked, but Max squinted at the menu. When Bessy noticed this, she snatched it out of his hands.

"Oh, sugar, don't you bother your little foreign head about ordering. I promise your mouth will think it died and went to heaven." Max made as if to protest, but stopped when she fixed him with a suspicious glare.

"Do not tell me y'all are vegetarians."

Max and Seth both smiled and shook their heads. "Most definitely not."

"Good, because you two sure do look like you could use some feeding up." And she was off to the kitchen with her bouffant threatening to crash down like a tidal wave at any second. Soon she was back with plates piled high that she kept bringing until there was no more room on the table. She still managed to find room for two ice-cold beers. Seth looked at the unfamiliar Mexican label.

"Tecate?" he asked.

"Never heard of it," Max replied.

Seth took a swig and smiled. "If you don't like it, I'm drinking yours."

Max looked uncertainly at the spread in front of him, but within a few bites he progressed to emitting little sounds of full blown rapture. In the week they had been in Texas, they had eaten bland, tasteless food served to them by hostile waitresses who they strongly suspected of spitting in their food. Max was starving and applied himself with enthusiasm.

"Bessy, you angel," he declared the next time she stopped by their table. "What is this divine thing I am eating?"

"Well, my gracious, you poor boys never had chicken-fried steak with cream gravy? Lord a mercy, who would have thought of such a thing? This here is cheddar-jalapeno grits. That right there is potato salad and this over here is creamed spinach with chipotles. Oh my! I just now thought of it. Y'all must be Yankees!" Seth could hear several nearby patrons gasp.

"I understand up north y'all don't have any real peppers. I hope the food is not too spicy for you?" Bessy asked anxiously.

Max beamed at her between mouthfuls, "This food is making me so happy, I could just cry." His cheeks were pink.

Seth, for his part, looked upon the diner with newfound appreciation for the fine art of decorating displayed. Actually, the decorations were primarily an assortment of old kitchen gadgets and lawn equipment tacked to the wall, from back when they used electricity like it was going to be around forever. He saw a pasta maker and one of those crazy old Foreman grills.

"We are from Queen Charlotte Islands. It's near Canada," Seth interjected. He had been eating so fast, that he dropped his chicken-fried steak into his lap and was now trying to wipe gravy off his pants without Max noticing. Seth was cursed with chronic clumsiness and Max made fun of him every time. Every single time.

"I knew it! Yankees!" Bessy was clearly storing any information about the two strangers up for future gossip. "Well, save room for pie. We got pecan, apple, chocolate cream, and peach tonight and I made them all myself. Oh sugar, you got something on your face." She leaned over and briskly scrubbed Seth's cheek with a napkin. The diner was starting to fill up so she was off again.

"Apparently this is, in fact, the place where Texas hides all the friendly people who like foreigners. I don't know how we got to be Yankees, but I'm not going to disabuse her of the notion," Seth observed cheerfully around a mouthful of potatoes.

"What do you think this drink is here?" Max asked, pointing to a glass of something.

After an experimental sip, Seth knew. "I think it's sweet iced tea. I read about it before we left." Max was disappointed by its obvious lack of alcohol.

After a few slices of pie, and a minor spasm of joy after getting the bill, they were sipping coffee and amiably watching the locals. "It's a fifth of the price we'd have spent in a restaurant in Vancouver," Max gloated. He called to Bessie when she came to collect the bill, "Bessy, you marvelous woman, marry me!"

"Oh, sugar, that pie has gone straight to your head." She giggled and blushed like a teenager. "Don't let my man Bubba hear you talking like that. He's the cook here and he's got one of them temperamental attitudes, if you know what I mean."

"I shall have to content myself with eating here every chance I get," Max said, fixing her with a devilish grin. For a brief moment, Bessy forgot she was a middle-aged woman with bunions and two kids in high school as she waved them out the door with a smile.

CHAPTER FOUR

B
essy's smile was still in place the next afternoon when a battered old motorcycle spewing steam careened into the parking lot. The short but curvy young woman riding it whipped off her goggles and helmet and charged up to the door as the steamcycle sputtered to a stop.

"Bessy, where are they? Did Bubba chop them up for steak? Did they give up and go home? We told everybody to be nice to them. Real Nice. Extra-special nice. So where are they?" she cried. Bessy put a cup of coffee and plate of smoked chicken in front of the girl as though she hadn't spoken.

"Now, Miss Kalliope, you need to not get so fussed. Those boys seemed real happy with life when they left here, so I imagine they are still poking around somewheres." The blond woman shot Bessy a look as she took a bite of broccoli casserole. "Oh now I'm sorry, Miss Clio, I forgot you gone and cut your hair. What are you doing, tearing across the countryside on your sister's contraption like that?"

"My scooter sprang a leak," Clio grumbled, pulling out her handheld, "Kalliope's fixing it."

"Well that girl can fix anything and if she doesn't add any of her little inventions to it, you should have it back right quick," Bessy replied sympathetically, "And how's your Momma?"

"She's fine. She and Joanna are stuck talking to those damn Malsanto people this afternoon, so I'm supposed to roll out the red carpet for these visiting computer geeks. What were they like, anyway?" Clio seemed to relax under the soothing spell of smoked chicken and coffee.

"Well, they was real nice for poor, uncultured Yankees. Imagine not knowing what chicken-fried steak was! A little standoffish but they had some real pretty manners. Not too bad looking, but they were peaky like they needed feeding up." Bessy beamed, happy to give her opinion.

She leaned closer to Clio conspiratorially, "So why are we being so nice to these boys?"

Clio smiled mysteriously and mock-whispered, "These boys are looking to set up a satellite office for Omerta Corp. They specialize in computer security. They are very good at helping people keep secrets. And between worrying about the government and the terrorists, we sure do need some security. I'd explain more, but I've got a zillion things to do today and now I've got to figure out where these guys went."

"Well, sugar," Bessy said, producing a slice of apple pie like a rabbit out of a hat, "You could have just called, you know."

"If I'd called, I would have missed out on your apple pie," she laughed. Clio's handheld chirped and she answered it. After listening for a few minutes, she flicked it off and paid Bessy.

"Mom says Dan Martinez called to tell her that aliens are camped out in his south pasture, scaring his goats. So I think I found my missing geeks." Clio cranked up the steamcycle and roared off.

An hour later, she was hiking through the tall brush to get to a large black tent in the middle of a field with a hovercar parked next to it. The tent looked like it could comfortably hold a maharaja and most of his harem. She noticed a collapsible satellite dish and two large fans built into one side.

"Hello in there," she called. "I'm Clio. My friend Joanna was supposed to meet with you gentlemen today, but she's stuck doing something very boring so here I am to help you out. You all need a local guide?"

After a minute, a man called back, "Of course, please come in." When she did, she found the entryway had two sets of zippered doors, like an airlock.

"Man, you guys really love the black, don't you? A dark tent like this ought to be scorching hot." It was actually quite cool with the fans, however. She looked around with interest at the dimly lit interior. It was packed with various screens and sensors. Clio wondered how all this equipment came out of the tiny hovercar. Then the two men captured her attention.

"Hello, I am Seth and this is my uncle, Max," Seth shook her hand formally.

She smiled, delighted with his manners and his strange accent. "Well I'm sure glad I found you. We thought y'all had given up and gone home. Looks like you are prepared to camp out on the moon in this thing."