3rd World Products, Book 17 (9 page)

Glancing at the yard, she nodded. “I think so. I can make it stop, go, turn, and swerve. Adding altitude might be more of a challenge.”

“Doubtful. ‘Up’ and ‘down’ are just other directions. Go back out there and think ‘up’ until it does it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Stand here and watch. There’s no point in suggesting we all fly somewhere until one of us in particular can actually fly, right?”

She gave me a droll look and said, “Just stand by one,” then headed for the sidewalk again. She was almost there when the nose of the scooter lifted and she soared about twenty feet above the parking lot, heading straight for the pine trees beyond it at about twenty miles per hour.

Tanya muttered, “Oh, shit!” and started forward, but I quickly reached to grab her belt. She tried to slap my hand away and yelped, “What the hell are you doing?!”

“Think, ma’am. What one thing
won’t
flitters and scooterboards do?”

Her glare softened, then she took a breath and said, “Crash.”

“Yup. Did you mention that fairly salient point to your mom?”

“Yes, but I don’t think she believed me.”

I chuckled, “Then this could be interesting,” and returned my attention to Marie’s apparent collision course toward the trees.

“You’d love to see her panic, wouldn’t you?”

“Ha. Marie? You don’t seem to know her very well, ma’am. She might get pissed, but she won’t panic.”

“Then what..?”

“Just watch. And listen.”

Just before Marie reached the trees, we heard something akin to a weightlifter’s grunt and the scooter veered upward and to the right, gaining speed and altitude quickly. It did half a loop, then twisted in the air as Marie tried to right herself. She overdid that move and ended up banking sharply left and slightly downward. The scooter slowed and Marie managed to right herself, then leveled out. After a few moments, she began doing another set of circles and figure-eights about two hundred feet up.

Sipping my coffee, I watched for a moment, then said, “Now we can go. She’ll be in a much better mood. Take your time, though.”

“Why?”

“She’s tuning herself in. Let her work with her scooter for a little while before you say anything. And don’t make a big deal of it.”

Easing my board upward toward Marie, I watched her tighten and quicken her maneuvers.

Catching up with me, Tanya asked, “Don’t make a big deal of it? Ed, she just learned how to
fly
, dammit.”

“Nope. She got her private ticket in 1971. All she learned tonight is how it feels to be a young hotshot again.”

Moving ahead a bit and putting a hand up to stop me, Tanya met my gaze for a moment, then stated, “Whatever she might have been way back then, you damned well take it easy on her tonight.”

Watching Marie enter an upward spiral behind her, I laughed, “Try telling her that.”

Tanya glanced at her mother, then stood staring open-mouthed.

I said, “Tanya, you’re the one who needs to take it easy. You only know one side of her. Your mom. I’d bet fifty bucks you’ve never met this woman before in your life.”

Marie gave a yell and nosed her scooter straight up. She was only doing about sixty, but she sounded as if she’d found a winning lottery ticket. Arcing backward, she performed the inverted roll she’d fought her way out of near the trees and yelled again.

Leaving Tanya to her gaping and staring, I lifted quickly to get somewhat above Marie and sat on my board. Tanya had belatedly started to follow me upward, then veered to level out at Marie’s altitude and hovered some distance away.

Marie saw her and made a couple of tight circles around her with a rather manic laugh, then angled sharply upward toward me. Tanya followed her, lifting straight up without aiming the board upward.

As Marie slowed and stopped near me, I saw her eyes glitter with excitement above her huge grin.

Handing her my coffee mug, I asked, “Having fun yet, ma’am?”

She snorted a sharp laugh, took several sips of my coffee, and burped softly before chuckling, “Oh, probably only as much fun as can be expected, I suppose.”

Handing my mug back, she asked, “What’s next?”

“Riding the board. Or not, I guess, if you’re having enough fun with the scooter. Tanya can coach you on the board later.”

Marie glanced at her approaching daughter, then met my gaze and said softly, “I’d rather learn with you.”

Hm. An awkward proposition, if I was reading things correctly. Did she know Tanya and I had a fling while… nah. Unlikely Tanya would have told her. But I wasn’t really sure of it, and Marie had always been a very good people-reader.

Tanya pulled up alongside us as I replied, “We can introduce you to your board tonight and try some real flying when I come back up here tomorrow. Once we get the basics out of the way…”

Marie held up a hand. “Wait. Are you seeing anyone these days? Tanya said you and that Elgin woman broke up.”

“We didn’t exactly ‘break up’, ma’am. She was transferred and she’s up for promotion. Being with me would have screwed things up. As hard as it is to believe, there are people in a number of federal agencies who… shall we say… ‘disapprove’ of me. A little. Sort of.”

Tanya blurted a fat guffaw, goggled at me, and laughed again. Marie grinned along and asked, “What don’t I know? Whatever it is, it seems funny as hell so far.”

Chapter Seven

Tanya laughed again and said, “Mom, I turned myself in, but he had to duck a federal warrant because of what we did. The ink on the warrant wasn’t even dry when he started an affair with Vicky and they were together for five months. It drove some people nuts.”

Raising an instructive index finger, I corrected her with, “We called it a ‘
protracted exceptional custody
‘, ma’am.”

Blurting another laugh, Tanya said, “I’m sure it was! Whose idea was that? Yours or hers?”

“Fullbright’s. She had to put something on the forms, so she made me an investigative assignment. I signed into technical custody and was assigned a case officer named Elgin.”

Marie snickered, “A ‘case officer’, huh? Convenient.”

“Yup. Fullbright’s solution covered all the technicalities without getting in my way.”

“In your way?”

Tanya said, “His hobby is answering 911 calls.”

Giving me a fisheye, Marie asked, “That’s a hobby?”

“From my point of view, yes.”

“Not from mine. I
was
a 911 call. It was no fun at all.”

“Like I said; a point of view. You ready to try a board?”

Glancing at Tanya, Marie replied, “I suppose so. Sorry. I wasn’t trying to… well, I mean I don’t disapprove of… Oh, never mind.”

“No sweat. Do you need to be on the ground to switch from scooter to board?”

“Ah… how would I do it up here?”

“The same way you made the scooter move. Think ‘board’. If you do it right, it’ll happen.”

“If I do it right? And what if I don’t? Suddenly I’ll be sitting on it?”

“Not necessarily, but if you want, you can stand on mine and step over to yours when it appears.”

Glancing down dubiously, she patted a tense rhythm on her handlebars for a second, then nodded. Lifting to maneuver above my board, she kept a hand on my arm as she dismounted her scooter and made it vanish, then called it back as a board.

It appeared beside us. With a level of caution I couldn’t remember ever seeing her use before, she kept her right hand on my left arm and carefully stepped over to her board. Two things came to my mind; I knew she’d surfed as a kid and her grasp of my arm wasn’t the kind of grip I’d expect from someone in the throes of trepidation. It was more of a ‘you aren’t going anywhere’ grip.

Newbies mostly stare at their feet and at the board for the first few moments. Not Marie. After quickly adjusting her stance, Marie looked up and met my gaze. She was steady and almost calm, despite being a few hundred feet up.

Beyond her, I saw Tanya develop an ‘
Oh, no…
‘  expression that quickly morphed into a somewhat more intense ‘
Oh, hell!
’

Marie noticed my slight distraction and turned. Tanya pretended to be brushing something off her left sleeve and examined the spot, then looked up as if wondering why we were looking at her.

She said, “Whatever it was, it’s gone now.”

Marie’s grip on my arm tightened considerably as she returned her gaze to mine. For a few moments she said nothing, then she let go of my arm and focused on her board. She moved forward and back a few inches, then tried different stances. The board tilted accordingly, but never very much.

Standing straight, she said, “I think I see. It’s more like a joystick platform than a surfboard.”

The reasonably accurate comparison startled me slightly, but not the fact Marie had come up with it. I shrugged. “Similarities to both, I guess. You won’t get extreme angles of tilt or sway unless the board’s in motion to match them. You also can’t fall off or hit anything, but I think Tanya already mentioned that.”

Giving me a very direct gaze, Marie stated, “Yes, she did,” then she sent her board forward at about walking speed.

I started to follow, then thought better of it and looked at Tanya, who looked back with another of those, ‘oh, hell,’ expressions.

She softly said, “Ed…”

Shaking my head, I said, “She either guessed or she didn’t. We won’t know unless she says something, so clam up and hope for the best.”

Tanya nodded and we set forth after Marie, who was now moving at something above a running speed. She cautiously slalomed the board a few times, whipped the back end around to stand the board on its nose, and then headed downward.

Angling down to catch up as she leveled out headed east, I said, “See if you can follow me, ma’am.”

Marie shot me a glower and snapped, “Just hang on a minute. I need to think, okay?”

Pretending not to understand, I asked, “Think about what? You’re doing fine. Better than fine.”

Glancing up and back at Tanya, Marie growled, “Ed, I know her too well. That shoulder-check is one of her signature fake-innocence moves. You two… you got together, didn’t you?”

Deny it? How, without lying?

I replied, “Very briefly.”

She hissed, “
You sonofabitch! She’s half your age!
”

“So? The interest was mutual. Before you decide to go nuts on me, talk to her.”

Marie looked almost apoplectic. I’ve no doubt that had we been on the ground, she’d have attacked me. Did I care enough to listen to her rant at me or try to explain anything? Nope. She had her board and Tanya could coach her well enough. I had my backpack and coffee mug; nothing to pick up before leaving. Maybe I could scribble a couple of chapters tonight.

Dropping back to meet Tanya, I said, “Take over. I’m leaving.”

“What?! Why?!”

“She figured it out, she’s pissed, and I won’t deal with a tirade or worse. Later, ma’am.”

With that, I had Galatea pop into being and slid aboard. Once I was seated, I asked her switch to two-seat mode, but she didn’t. I realized why as a slight ‘thump’ sounded behind me and Marie’s arm wrapped tightly around my neck.

“
You’re not going anywhere!
” she yowled, “
I’m going to…
” and that’s as far as she got before Galatea put a stasis field around her.

My p-field had come on when Marie had put her choke hold on me. Turning off the p-field, I gently pried her arms away from my neck, stood up, and considered what to do with her. Maybe it was time to talk after all?

“Marie,” I said, “No laws were broken. We had a good time. And she didn’t trade pussy for help, if that’s what you’re thinking. She didn’t pounce on me until
after
we’d gotten things underway and she didn’t stop pouncing on me after we stuffed you full of nanobots.”

Tanya slid aboard and yelped, “I didn’t
pounce
on you, dammit!”

“The hell you didn’t. I still have some bruises from it.”

She screeched, “Don’t say shit like that! All we did was…” she glanced at Marie and sighed as she slumped a bit. “Aw, hell. It might not matter what either of us says, Ed. I’ve seen her like this before. She was ready to kill Mr. Brook when she thought he’d hit me.”

“Did he?”

“No. He was a science teacher. He’d been telling Danny Brewster something about astronomical units and waved his hands wide just as I walked by. I had a faint black eye, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

Looking at Marie, she said emphatically, “But my ballistic mom wouldn’t listen to
me
. She charged over to the school looking for Mr. Brook. If Mrs. Hemmerlin hadn’t been there — she saw what happened — if she hadn’t been there to get between them, well… Then the cops came and things got even worse. They had to call in the child welfare people to make sure nothing was being covered up.” Rolling her eyes, she added, “Talk about Gestapo..!”

Nodding, I said, “No need to tell me, ma’am. I met them during the Aria Wilson case. Self-righteous stormtroopers.” Thumbing at Marie, I asked, “What’ll we do with her?”

Tanya looked at her mother. “I don’t know. If you let her go, she might attack you again. How long can you keep her like that?”

“That would be considered kidnapping or false imprisonment or something, ma’am. Can’t have that. Maybe I should just land, let her go and stun her at the same time, and then run like hell.”

Nodding thoughtfully, Tanya agreed, “That could work.” As if an afterthought, she added, “Of course, you’d probably have to leave the country. For a while, anyway, just to be on the safe side.”

“Yeah, there is that.” Pulling a quarter out of my pocket, I flipped it as if making a chance decision. Letting the coin land on the back of my hand, I asked, “I wonder if she can still do ten coins?”

Tanya shook her head. “Probably not. You might have a chance.”

“Prob’ly only if I don’t try to find out. Did I ever tell you how mean she used to be?”

Pretending to try to remember, Tanya said, “Yes, I believe you did. I’m almost sure of it.”

“You think she truly understands that neither of us took advantage of the other? That we had a good time, that we’re just friends now, and that there are no wrongs to avenge?”