3rd World Products, Book 17 (6 page)

“Somehow I’m not at all surprised to hear you say that.”

“Good. Shows you’ve been paying attention all these years.” Spearing another bit of meat, I added, “And try to make up your mind before I have reason to contact Ava again.”

Lori froze and eyed me for a time, then asked rather archly, “What ‘reason’ would that be?”

“You think they’re gonna stop watching us? I don’t, and I’d still like to know why someone wants us watched.”

“So why not contact one of the others?”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t really ask that question.”

Rolling her eyes, Lori sighed, “I can’t believe this. You’re thinking about trying to talk her into bed, aren’t you?”

I considered how to answer that and settled for, “Never mind. Next topic.”

Lori snapped, “There is no ‘next topic’. We aren’t through with this topic.”

“I am. We aren’t getting anywhere with it. Besides, we might be better off as friends than lovers. You’re never this indecisive when we work together. Only when we get into personal stuff.”

My orbital core announced that my home phone was ringing. I had it trace the call and found Tanya Conner at the other end. Holding up a hand to stop whatever Lori had been about to say, I linked to the phone to answer with, “You got me, Tanya.”

Tanya said, “Uh… Hi, Ed. I’m calling because my mother would like to talk to you.”

“Well, I have company and I’m in a restaurant, ma’am. May I call you back in a little while?”

Lori sat a little straighter, but kept silent.

Tanya said, “Uh… okay. We’ll be here. Bye.”

“Okay. Call you shortly. Bye.”

Poking some lima beans onto her fork, Lori asked, “Who can’t you talk to in public?”

“A number of people for a variety of reasons, but I postponed her because I don’t hold phone conversations in restaurants. That was Tanya. It seems her mom wants a word with me.”

Looking up somewhat starkly, Lori murmured, “Oh… Oh, my.”

Nodding, I solemnly agreed, “Indeed so, ma’am.”

“Did she say why?”

“Nope.” I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. If it’s anything unpleasant, I can write her off for another few decades.”

“Maybe she had a change of heart.”

“No point in guessing. I’ll just call her later.”

We finished our dinners and left the restaurant. As I threw a leg over my bike, Lori asked, “Do you want some alone time to talk to Tanya’s mom? I could do some shopping.”

Hm. Did I? Actually, no. I shook my head. “No, stick around. I might want a good excuse to end the call.”

Lori gave me a flat expression and asked, “It’s only Ocala. You aren’t going to go up there?”

“Nope. Not without an invitation.”

“I think I’ll give you that alone time anyway. Later, Ed.”

Lori lifted away on her board as I started the bike. A few miles north on Citrus Way, I picked a tree-shaded spot and stopped. Taking a sip of coffee, I put up a screen and called Tanya.

After greetings, Tanya said, “I’ll put mom on now,” and a few moments later, Marie said, “Uh… Hello, Ed,” then nothing else.

I replied, “Hi, Marie. What’s on your mind?”

A moment passed, then she said, “Linda told me what happened to Mike. And what you did about it.” I heard her take a breath, then she continued, “And what you did about me. I just wanted to say thanks, but it… well, it doesn’t seem… it doesn’t seem enough.”

“But it is. You’re welcome, and what I did about Mike was for all of us. Have you heard from Will and Connie?”

She paused again, then replied cautiously, “No. Should I have?”

“Guess not. They didn’t contact me either.”

“Didn’t Linda tell them what happened?”

“Seems likely. It also seems likely they felt the same way you did about what happened to Mike. They wouldn’t have known any more about it than you did. Oh, well. I was never one of their favorite people off the job.”

“Neither was I, apparently.”

To get off that topic and lighten the mood, I asked, “How have you been getting along, Marie? You’re sounding good.”

I already knew some of the answer to that. In Linda’s pictures of Marie’s progress, she’d looked thirty-five or forty after Milla’s nanobots had finished reconstructing her facial damage. The pictures couldn’t tell me about her mental progress, but she wasn’t slurring her words.

Marie asked, “You really don’t know?”

“Nope. I saw Linda’s pictures, but I was more concerned about what they couldn’t show. You aren’t having trouble with words now, so I guess that end of things is working out fairly well, too.”

For whatever reason, Marie paused again before she replied, “Yes, I think… that end of things… is doing fairly well. Ed, Tanya said the Robodoc wanted to see me. Why?”

“Prob’ly a checkup. Maybe some fine tuning or something. I don’t know. And her name is Milla. Are you calling for a ride?”

“I… I don’t know yet. It was one thing to let the Robodoc… uhm… fix… my face and head, but my brain is… is
me
. The
real
me. I’m not sure I want it to… to tinker with my brain.”

“Then you need more info, ma’am. All the brain-tinkering was done when Milla’s ‘bots rebuilt the damaged areas to match the other side’s undamaged areas. Strictly physical reconstruction. Any mental progress you’ve made since then is all your own work.”

From somewhere near her, Tanya asked, “Ed, why not put up a screen and show her?”

I said, “That’s up to Marie.”

Marie asked, “Uh… a screen?”

“A field video screen.”

“You can do that?”

“Tanya seems to think so. Yes or no, please.”

A beat passed, then she said, “Yes. Okay.”

I sent a probe and made it a screen at their end. Tanya waved from her seat on the couch. Next to her, Marie stared wide eyed at the screen for a moment, then said flatly, “Oh, my. Uh… hello, Ed.”

Expanding the screen, I split it and displayed a quick review of Milla’s repairs to Marie. When the display finished, I said, “And then the excess ‘bots left your system.”

Marie almost warily asked, “If they finished and left, why would the Robodoc want to see me?”

“You’d have to ask her, but I think she just wants to check her work. I know I would.”

Her left eyebrow arched. “But you haven’t. I haven’t seen you since you visited the clinic with Tanya.” Canting her head with a studious expression, she added, “In fact, I’d like to know how you knew when it was time to take Tanya and disappear.”

That made me look at Tanya. Her eyes widened slightly, but she remained silent. I looked back at Marie and said, “Tanya and I used a probe to check your progress that evening. What we saw was pretty startling. Watch.”

Contacting my core, I showed Marie what Tanya and I had seen; new bone and gristle and new translucent skin covering everything, becoming more normal-looking as we watched.

Marie looked starkly at Tanya and asked, “You can do those… probe… things, too?”

Tanya shook her head. “No, mom. We were using his.”

Looking back at me, Marie asked quietly, “And have you done any… ahh… ‘
checking up
‘… on me since then?”

“Nope. No need. I’d done all I could and the ‘bots were in contact with Milla. If they’d run into any problems, they’d…”

Tanya angrily interrupted with, “
No
, Ed. What my mother wants to know is whether you’ve been
spying
on her.”

She turned to Marie and snapped, “
Damn it, mom!
After
all that
, you…” She stopped there and glared for a moment, then took a breath and said, “Excuse me, Ed. I need to go
hit
something.” She stalked away into a bedroom and slammed the door.

Marie watched her go, then turned to me and asked, “Well?”

I met her gaze for a moment, said, “No,” and poked the screen’s ‘off’ icon. The screens at both ends vanished.

Chapter Five

A shadow passed over the area and I looked up. It was Lori. She landed and gave me a long look, then asked, “Do you need some time to yourself?”

Sipping coffee, I replied, “No, things went about as I expected.” At her fisheye expression, I added, “You’d have to know Marie.”

“What if she calls back?”

I shrugged. “What if? How can it matter?”

“I don’t think I understand.”

Considering how to put things, I said, “Lori, I set out to fix her. Now she’s fixed. There doesn’t have to be more. If she calls back, I’m under no obligation to talk with her.”

Looking somewhat perplexed, Lori eyed me for a moment, then said, “I’ll see you back at the house,” and lifted away.

Sipping my coffee again, I put the mug back between the handlebar straps and started the bike. Where to? Nowhere. A country ride on a nice day.

I’d just gotten up to sixty when my core informed me my phone was again ringing. Linking into it, I found Tanya’s number calling. Sending a probe, I found Marie holding the phone. She’d probably hit the redial button. She looked pissed.

I answered her call with, “You got me, Batgirl.”

“Aren’t you going to make another… screen-whatsis?”

“Do we really need one? What’s on your mind, ma’am?”

She said coldly, “You
hung up
on me. Or turned off. Or whatever.”

“Yeah, and it could happen again. Say something meaningful.”

“Like what?”

“Like why we need to talk at all.”

There was a pause, then a soft, grudging, “Goddammit, I feel as if I owe you.”

“Well, I’d even agree with that, but you can work it off. Help Stephanie and her legal beagles fight the medical field laws.”

“I’m already doing that.”

“Then we’re good. Anything else, ma’am?”

Another brief pause happened, then, “Yes. I need a board like Tanya’s. I can’t even begin to keep up with her. She’s having to carry me on her board when we…”

I was nearing US-98 and traffic had become hectic. Interrupting Marie, I said, “Traffic, ma’am. Lemme park the bike,” and pulled into the only gas station for miles. Once I’d put the kickstand down, I put up screens at both ends, then said, “Boards cost a grand and you’ll need about two days for training. Think you can stand me that long?”

Marie hung up her phone as she shot back, “Sure. I put up with you for most of 1972. I think I could manage another couple of days.”

“Hey, I dunno, ma’am. I’m older and meaner now.”

“So am I.”

“Well, you’re on, then. Go find a grand and I’ll buzz up there on Monday. If you can handle the bunny slope, I’ll sell you a board.”

Her gaze narrowed. “The bunny slope? What’s that?”

I chuckled, “It’s scary as hell, ma’am. Ask Tanya about it. Good ‘nuff? I kinda want to get back to what I was doing.”

Heh. Tanya would give her some abridged version of her first flights on her board.

Marie said, “If you can fly one, so can I.”

“Yeah, that’s the spirit. See you Monday. Bye.”

“Wait. This Lori person… what is she to you?”

“That’s a pretty personal question, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is. So? Is she your girlfriend?”

“Not at this time. That’s all you get. Bye.”

I let the screens dissipate and went into the store for a coffee refill, then got back on the road. North of US-98, the traffic thinned to nothing. I sent a ping to Lori.

She answered, “Yes?”

“I’m going up to Ocala Monday. Marie wants a board. If you aren’t too busy, maybe you’d like to come along.”

“She called you back?”

“Yup.”

“And she thinks she can handle a board?! Ed, I know she
looks
young since her repairs, but she’s actually…”

Heh. “Yes’m? Were you about to say something about how she’s gotta be my age?”

Lori sighed, “Yeah. Never mind. If she’s still enough like you, that won’t really matter, will it?”

“No, prob’ly not.”

After a brief pause, Lori said, “Sure, pencil me in. But I might have to go help Aunt Lisa with the house. Relatives are visiting this week.”

“Okay. We’ll see how things go. Later.”

“Yeah. Later.”

She dropped the link. Hm. She’d mentioned the relatives on Thursday, but that hadn’t interfered with her visit to Florida. Help with the house? Was she just grabbing an excuse to put some distance between us for now? Whatever.

When I reached County Road 44, I simply turned around. You can’t beat the scenery on Citrus Way in this area. An hour later I put the bike in the garage and entered the den to find Lori absorbed in the data on three screens at once. She gave me a little wave as she scrolled the center screen.

All I saw were equations and such, but some looked vaguely familiar. I sipped coffee and studied the left screen. Okay, that bunch of stuff seemed to have something to do with time and distance. On the right-hand screen were flitter specifications. Lori stopped scrolling the center screen and I saw satellite data.

“Got a project going, ma’am?”

She replied, “Sort of. 3rd World was asked to help bring down a satellite that malfunctioned.” Looking at me, she added, “They politely refused. I’m wondering why.”

“You could ask.”

Returning her eyes to her screens, she said, “I could, but I’d just get some version of the official story. I thought I’d use my spare time to look into it, but so far I’ve found nothing.”

Sipping coffee, I said, “Try this; 3rd doesn’t want to appear to be anyone’s tool or ally in any endeavors but their own.”

Giving the ceiling a ‘
here we go again
‘ look, Lori turned to me and said, “Trust you to come up with something like that.”

“Hey, if you can’t find verifiable facts, it’s prob’ly about politics. Maybe the feds want someone to think they can have satellites removed. What kind is it? Civilian, military, or spy?”

“Military.”

“Got a number?”

“USA-281. There’s no other open description for it, except to say it would be very dangerous if it deorbited over land.”

“Okay, figure this; they didn’t say the danger was falling parts, which would be the most obvious danger. That leaves what? Something likely to cause localized toxicity, which would probably be fuel, which is very probably hydrazine. I suggest you look up satellite USA-193.”