3rd World Products, Book 17 (33 page)

Wallace pinged back almost immediately and I put up a screen.

He grinningly saluted and said, “Well done, by God! I’ve recalled our flits one and two. As soon as you’re done there, get up here so I can buy you a beer.”

Two more pings sounded as I answered, “A beer?! That’s all? No medals? No parade?”

Trying to look apologetic, he chuckled, “Budget cuts. Sorry.”

“Then make it
two
beers. And drinks for these lovely ladies.”

He laughed, “You drive a hard bargain, but… okay. Sure. Hello, Marie. Nice to see you again.”

The pings sounded again as he looked at Susan and said, “And you must be Dr. Figler. Congratulations, ma’am. You’ve startled the hell out of a lot of people.”

“Ah… I did?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am, you definitely did. You invented a piece of field tech on your own. That’s a first as far as anyone here knows.”

We heard a door open at his end and he glanced up, raised an index finger to have someone wait, and then said, “Again, Ed, well done. I’ll see you all when you get here. “

With that, he dropped the link.

Bernard raised his chin for a rub as Susan asked, “Uh… Shouldn’t we tell somebody here, uh… what just happened?”

Two more pings sounded as I asked, “You think they haven’t noticed the unwrecked barge, ma’am?”

Looking annoyed, she asked, “But still, shouldn’t you make a report to someone?”

“I sent it to Wallace. He can pass it on.”

That answer didn’t seem to satisfy her, but she let the matter drop.

Marie grinned and chuckled, “I can see the headline now; ‘
Wind Power Saves Oil Company’s Ass
‘.”

Susan laughed, “Oh, they’d love that.”

Galatea’s monitor chimed, then chimed again. Icons for the Memphis and St. Louis flits appeared a few miles behind our icon. I poked both icons at once to cause a split screen and said, “Hi, there. Are you coming to Carrington with us?”

Both flitter pilots quickly scanned the ladies and me before they answered almost in unison, “No,” and realized someone else was speaking. They both reached to adjust their screens, then apparently each of them assumed the other would defer and they began speaking at the same time. Heh. As expected.

When they’d subsided, I pointed at the woman aboard the Memphis flitter and said, “Ladies first. What’s up?”

“Sir, why didn’t you answer my comm signal?”

“I was talking with Admiral Wallace.”

Her intensely irritated expression softened to a ‘merely annoyed’ expression.

“Oh. But why didn’t you file a report before you left?”

“I did. With Wallace.” Pointing at the guy on the St. Louis flit, I said, “Your turn.”

He’d been eyeing the ladies and Bernard and asked, “Sir, are those people authorized to be aboard during an emergency action?”

“Really? That’s your first concern? You think maybe Wallace didn’t notice them?”

“He probably assumed they’d been authorized. I don’t.”

“Uh, huh. Okay. Short answer: yes.”

“Who authorized them?”

“It’s my flitter, dude. I say who rides.”

Memphis checked something at the bottom of her screen and said, “Lt. Harris, forget it. He’s that guy from Florida.”

I asked, “How come you didn’t know that before you called?”

Harris looked rather critically at my shirt and hat and said, “I saw some vids about you during training. Flashy stuff. You look like you think you’re some special kind of special.”

“You’re the one who just declared himself smarter than an admiral, kid. And you don’t have to like my hat. Hang on one.”

Linking to my core, I silently asked, “Would you please override and disable his flitter’s flight control?”

My core asked, “For what purpose?”

“Call it safety training. I want to see how he handles a crisis.”

My core replied, “Then, yes, but for only twelve seconds at his current altitude and speed.”

“That’ll be fine. Please shut him down when I say ‘Fulda’.”

Aloud, I said, “LT, I’m about to do something you’ll probably find very disconcerting. Try not to panic, okay?”

The LT arched an eyebrow and snapped, “Do you
seriously
think you’re scaring anyone with that…”

Raising a hand to interrupt him, I said, “Fulda.”

His flitter instantly lost power to all but its monitor and hull field and began canting to the left. The LT yelped and quickly issued tense commands that were ignored, then almost screamed the same commands as he clung to one of the seats.

Memphis yelled, “
What the hell did you do?!
”

I ignored her repeated yells and watched the LT cling and howl as the rest of him floundered through an inverted flat spin.

Memphis screamed, “
Harris! Harris!
”

Harris kept floundering and yowling his commands at the inert flitter. When he lost his grip on the seat, he screamed as he fell all of two feet or so to land on the inverted flitter’s hull field. Staring down through the transparent field, he screamed again.

Seconds later, the flitter locked him in stasis, righted itself, and deposited Harris in his seat. He locked onto it and sat panting hard as he stared starkly at the monitor.

Memphis yelled, “Harris! Are you okay?! What the
hell
just happened over there?!”

“
That goddamned maniac shut down my flitter! Get off the screen! I have to call this in!
”

Sending a probe to hover by his left shoulder, I said, “Hold that thought,” and he shrieked as he recoiled away from it.

“Harris,” I said, “You might want to compose yourself a bit before you call it in. If you call it in at all.”

Memphis bellowed, “What the hell’s
wrong
with you?!”

“I must have reacted poorly to his ‘
some special kind of special
‘ comment. Do you want to try your hand at free-fall, too?”

She glared hard, but kept her mouth shut.

In a still-shaky voice, Harris said, “I
will
report this!
Count
on it!”

“Yeah, you do that, LT. The video of you hanging from a seat and screaming ought to give a helluva lot of people a big fat giggle. Tell me something, people; how come neither of you hotshots thought of trying to fix the barge’s engines?”

I let the probe dissipate without saying goodbye.

In a cautious tone, Susan said, “Ed, he might do it anyway.”

Marie barked a laugh, then patted Susan’s hand and seemed to be imitating someone as she placatingly said, “Doing such things is how some of the young ones have to learn, dear girl.”

She laughed again as Susan somewhat critically eyed me and asked, “Learn
what?
Not to file reports against Ed?”

I shrugged. “I don’t care if he files a report. It would just give everybody a good laugh. Maybe now he won’t try to pull rank he doesn’t have on people who don’t need rank.”

“You mean ‘
people who don’t respect rank
‘, don’t you?”

“I said exactly what I meant, sweetie. When people push me, they find out why I don’t need it. Now buckle up. We’re landing.”

Susan looked ahead, saw how fast we were descending, and quickly reached down beside her seat. Finding nothing, she frantically groped around her seat without taking her eyes off the world below. Bernard watched her hands flit about with great interest.

Susan let forth a high pitched, “There
aren’t
any seat belts!”

Looking at Marie, I asked, “Do we seem to be coming down a little too fast this time? And on a bit of an angle?”

Her teeth clenched and eyes slightly large, Marie nonetheless tried to sound calm as she said, “Yeah. I think so.”

“Damn, I thought I fixed that. Better hang onto something.”

Susan shrieked, “
FIXED WHAT?!
” and Bernard looked up at her as if doubting her sanity.

Leaning to look at her, I fed both ladies some theta waves and said, “Relax, ma’am. Nothing’s wrong. Pet your kitty.”

When Susan was much calmer, I said, “Don’t ever tell me or anyone else that what I meant is whatever you’re in the mood to want to
think
I meant. You prob’ly can’t find a better way to annoy me and I won’t put up with it.”

She didn’t take her eyes off the rapidly expanding complex below us as she replied tersely, “Uh. Okay. Sorry.”

“Thank you. Would you like a copy of this trip?”

Forcing her eyes away from the scene below, she looked at me and asked, “A copy? You mean of what you did at the river?”

“No, I mean from takeoff to landing. Even this last little bit with you groping frantically for a seat belt and screaming at me.”

“Uh… No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Be sure, ma’am.”

“I
am
sure. No. Are you going to show it to anyone?”

“I’d much prefer that everyone at Carrington thinks I’ve brought them a cute young math genius.”

Marie gave me a sidelong glance, but said nothing. Susan stroked Bernard and nodded as she said softly, “Yeah. Me, too.”

“Great. Box up Bernard so we can take him in with us.”

November in the Dakotas is a bit cooler than November in Florida. When we settled in front of the admin building, I had Tea extend her hull field to the doors before we stepped down.

Wallace opened the doors for us as we climbed the steps and we made introductions before we reached the sign-in desk.

As the ladies got visitor IDs, Wallace looked at me and asked, “Anything to add to your typically sparse report?”

I shook my head. “Nope. How about you?”

He grinned, then chuckled, “Yeah. I liked being called ‘Cap’ better than ‘Rear Admiral Wallace’. After all these years, it just sounds better somehow.”

“I’ll try to remember that. Wait, there is something else. It might be a good idea to take a look through patent apps of other countries to see if any other field-using gadgets have shown up anywhere.”

“We thought of that not long after we heard about Susan’s. Hey, I was serious about buying a round of drinks.”

“And I was serious about accepting. How about now?”

He nodded. “I’m off duty in fifteen. Let’s get everybody settled and meet up at the Dirtside Pub.”

Leaving us with a woman named Collins, he left for his office. Tea fielded our luggage to the lobby and I cast a field pad to carry them to  Guest Quarters and our rooms.

Susan and Marie eyed the pad, then looked at me. Marie said nothing, but Susan asked about it. I managed to briefly explain field pads before we reached her room. She set up Bernard’s stuff, told him she’d be back in a while, and we moved on to Marie’s room.

After dumping our bags, the ladies and I went to the Dirtside Pub and found Wallace with a man and a woman at a table. Wallace introduced them as Chuck Draper and Louise Falco of Lab Two, then ordered a round of drinks. Figured. Cap wanted an immediate practical evaluation of Susan and her whiz kid math.

We presented a brief overview of finding and collecting Susan, then Louise asked her something about how she solved a tricky bit of math. Susan began explaining enthusiastically, and suddenly it was almost as if Wallace, Marie, and I weren’t even at the table.

I suggested a game of cutthroat pool to give them time to hash out whatever they were discussing. Marie and Wallace agreed and we each contributed a quarter to the first game.

Preparing to flip a quarter, I said, “Call it,” and called tails as Wallace and Marie both called heads. Heads it was.

I flipped it again and Wallace took tails. The coin came up heads, so Marie got balls one through five, Wallace got six through ten, and I had eleven through fifteen. Each of us had to sink everybody else’s balls to win and the eight wasn’t special.

Marie broke the rack. When she missed a shot at one of my balls, she’d left three of Wallace’s balls and three of mine still on the table.

Wallace made her two and my thirteen, then got stuck behind a small cluster of balls. He swore softly, shot at her five and missed, and almost put his own nine in a side pocket.

I lined up on Wallace’s nine. Popping it gently into the side, I next shot one of Marie’s in the other side, using some spin to make the cue ball roll toward a corner. A few shots later, the table was empty of their balls and I shot my own in to clear it.

I’d almost expected Wallace to give me some razz about shooting one handed, but he didn’t. Instead, he just clinked my bottle with his and said, “Good game. I’m going to leave you in Marie’s tender care and see how things are going at the math table. Don’t let her wander around loose, okay?”

With a two-finger salute, I replied, “Aye, aye, Cap’n.”

Marie asked, “You think he just wanted to get off the table?”

“Maybe, but I think he’s more interested in reading people while they talk. They’ve had some time to socialize a bit.”

Eyeing her beer bottle, she asked, “How many of these will we want? One’s really enough for me tonight.”

I shrugged. “Suits me. I think we stopped being necessary. We could prob’ly disappear right now if we wanted.”

Marie chuckled, “No, let’s be civilized and finish our beers first. Play another game? Regular pool this time?”

“Sure.”

I fed quarters into the table and she racked the balls. When I broke, the eight didn’t move at all. Marie chose stripes and made four of them before she got trapped behind my balls.

Laying my stick on the table, I popped in three balls, then lined up for a long green shot close to a pocket. Enough spin brought the cue ball halfway back up the side and I snapped in another ball.

Marie said, “You must spend a lot of time on pool tables.”

“Used to.” I put another ball in and watched the cue ball roll a little too far past the next ball I wanted. Oh, well. A bit more angle.

“Why shoot one handed?”

“Just do. I started doing it years ago. Now I have a better chance of screwing up if I use two hands.”

The cue ball again rolled just a bit too far, lodging firmly behind two of her stripes. In trying to sneak it out past them, I missed.

Marie stepped up and managed to put in all of her stripes, then barely missed a long green for the eight. Swearing softly, she stepped away from the table and said, “Looks like your game.”