Too Small For Tall

by Rosenberg, Aaron

  “Oh, I’m focused,” she promises him, though. “I just can’t believe one of my people would do such a thing, though.” She turns and leads the way through the maze of machinery and boxes and barrels and sacks and so forth. “Mixing room’s this way.”

  Everybody says hi to Rosie as she passes, and throws questioning looks at Tall and lustful or jealous looks at Mary—or sometimes the other way around. She always says hi back, I notice, and calls each person by name, stopping for a few seconds to exchange pleasantries before moving on. It’s clear her employees think she’s the bee’s knees, and I can already see why. I’ve never had a boss like her myself, but it’s obvious she’s one of the good ones.

  The only problem is, her stop-and-go approach is turning this would-be charge into a crawl. And that leaves more time for Tall to be exposed to cookies, cookies, cookies.

  I can already hear him breathing in great big gulps, and the way the camera’s view keeps shifting he’s gotta be turning his head side to side like a caged beast desperate to break free. Not good.

  “Yo, Tall,” I tell him, “chill, okay? Just let the nice lady lead us there so we can get some answers, and then you can get out of there.”

  “I’m . . . having a hard time of it,” he admits to me through that subvocal trick of his, and I’m kinda amazed. I mean, Tall never says he’s having trouble with anything! “I can feel the cookies out there,” he continues, “it’s like a constant itch just under my skin, all over. My teeth are practically buzzing, my head is throbbing, my vision’s starting to strobe, and with the way the light’s stabbing into me I’m pretty sure my pupils are dilated. I’m going into full-on panic mode here, and if that happens, people could get hurt.”

  “Ah . . .” Crap. I have no idea what to tell him. I mean, what should he do? Get the hell out of there and leave it to Mary to sort things out? I don’t know that’d work, though—I love Mary to pieces, and she’s awesome, but interrogation isn’t exactly her thing, and for all her brains there could be stuff someone who isn’t trained might miss. Have him close his eyes until they get to the mixing room? He’d just run into something, and that might set him off even worse. Find a way for him to blow off some steam now, before he hits full meltdown? Hey, that’s not a bad idea! “Listen,” I say quickly, “ask Rosie if there’s a place they put all the substandard cookies, damaged boxes, and so on. Someplace with nothing anybody would miss.”

  Tall nods sharply. “Yeah, good idea.” I pretend not to hear the surprise in his tone. “Thanks.” He reverts to actually speaking. “Ma’am, where do you keep all your damaged goods? The cookies that didn’t turn out right, the boxes that got damaged in packing, things like that?”

  “Hm?” They were just cutting past a pallet stacked high with sacks of flour, and Rosie stops to study him for a second. “Oh, that’d be the reject room. It’s right over there, next to the loading bay.” She gestures ahead and to the right. “We like to donate those to shelters and orphanages—no reason those folks can’t still enjoy them. Why?”

  “I . . . have a hunch I want to check out,” Tall manages to reply, and I’m impressed that he only sounds a little more homicidal than normal. “Where’s the mixing room from there, exactly? I’ll meet you two over there.”

  “Oh, that’s easy. From the rejects you just head straight down the pantry, where we keep all our ingredients, until you hit the second support beam. Then turn right and you’re there.” Rosie studies him for a second. “You sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

  “No no, that’s fine.” He’s starting to sound a little desperate. “Mary, you go with Rosie. I’ll be back in a minute.” I’m not sure Mary knows what he’s up to but she obviously realizes something’s going on because she doesn’t argue or ask for more detail—and this is the gal who likes to see the full ingredient list when I make her dinner! You know how hard it is to manage a culinary surprise with someone like that? It’s not like she’s allergic to anything, and any side effects’ve worn off within a day most times, plus I thought the fire-breathing thing was actually kind of cool, and worked out great with the s’mores. Anyway, she just nods and sets a hand on Rosie’s arm, asking her something to distract her as Tall wheels about and hurries away.

  The minute he’s out of the ladies’ sight he breaks into a sprint, and everything zooms past in a blur of metal and burlap and paper. I see a wide-open space at the far end of the building that has to be the loading bay, and as we close in on that Tall veers right a few degrees. We clear the last of the machinery, nothing but a wide open corridor here, bare concrete floors and whitewashed walls, with the bay to our left and a big storage room to the right. Tall makes a beeline for the set of double doors, and slams them open—

  —and we’re in the CampGirl cookie version of a thrift store. There’re boxes of cookies here piled from floor to ceiling all around, stacked on shelves and heaped on the floor, plus whole giant bins of loose cookies, all varieties just mixed in together. Everything in here is a little dented, a little dinged up, a little damaged.

  It’s perfect.

  Tall shuts the doors carefully behind him. Then he draws his gun, one of the two he took off those agents who were holding him. I think it’s the same kind he was waving about in midtown, and when I see him shoot a stack of boxes and make them glow blue and then disappear, I know I’m right. He pulls the other gun then, and starts shooting with both hands, making cookies sizzle and vanish left and right.

  That goes on for a good few minutes, but I can tell it’s not enough because eventually he tucks both guns away again—I don’t actually know where he’s keeping them or how, and I don’t really want to ask but I have this horrible image of Tall just clutching them in his armpits and I need something to scrub it out of my head, stat!—and starts whaling on cookies with his fists instead.

  Wham! A pile of cookie boxes flies into the air, smashed by his punch.

  Whallop! He backhands another stack, demolishing them and sending shreds of cardboard and bits of cookie everywhere. It’s like the most colorful—and tasty—snowfall ever.

  Thwack! He kicks a shelf, sending boxes raining down on his head, and smashes each one out of his way as it falls.

  After a few minutes Tall pauses and backs up to lean against the doorframe, panting. The room now looks like the Tasmanian Devil decided to come in here for his midday snack.

  “Feel any better?” I ask. I have to admit, it actually looked like fun.

  “Yes, actually,” he answers, and straightens, brushing any remnants off his jacket. “Thanks—that was exactly what I needed.”

  “Cool. Back to work, then.” I’m pretty pleased with myself as Tall exits the now-substantially-less-full rejects room and starts down the row of ingredients. Hey, this is why I got the tele-presence setup in the first place, so I could lend a hand even if I’m stuck here with the Matrix. And not so I could gather blackmail material on not only my friends but their coworkers and relatives. Nuh-uh, thought never crossed my mind.

  Tall’s got ridiculously long legs and he still doesn’t want to be here any longer than he has to, so I’m not surprised when he turns the corner and stops only a minute or two later. This must be the mixing room, and it isn’t quite what I expected. I guess I figured it’d be an old-fashioned kitchen, with long wooden tables white from flour and all sorts of pots and pans and measuring cups hanging from an iron rack overhead and maybe a sturdy wooden cart to wheel away the cups once they’re full of the properly measured and mixed ingredients.

  Instead, what I see is a mass of pipes that looks like a plumber’s wet dream, all snaking about and twisting around and past each other. There’s hoses and nozzles attached in various places, and valves and spouts too, and right in the middle is a heavy-duty computer workstation with four different monitors all linked together and two chairs in front of them.

  It’s like looking at a Mad Scientist chemistry set, only grown to industrial size.

  Mary and Rosie are talking to a pair of
workers when we arrive. One of them’s a tall, skinny woman with a long, bony face and straw hair who’s blinking almost nonstop, as if there’s something caught in her Anime-huge brown eyes. The other’s a guy, a little heavy but who’m I to judge, shock wheat-brown hair up top but receded a bit from his wide, jowly red face. I feel like I’m looking at Jack Sprat and his wife’s opposite halves.

  “Did your hunch pan out?” Rosie asks by way of greeting as Tall joins them.

  “Doesn’t look like it, no,” he answers, and yeah, he’s definitely a lot calmer now. “But thanks.” He swivels to study the pair. “And who’re you?”

  Both of them start at his bluntness, but after a beat or two the woman answers. “I’m Winona, and this is Reg. We’re the daytime mixing crew.”

  “Winona was just saying that she knows nothing of any alterations to the cookies,” Mary told Tall—and me, too. “She claims they have mixed nothing beyond the usual ingredients, and in the standard ratios.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Winona’s nodding so fast she’s practically a metronome. “We’d never mess with the cookies, you know that, ma’am! We’re very conscientious about it, aren’t we, Reg?”

  “Absolutely,” he agrees, but there’s something about the way he says it that sets off my radar. Is he lying? He does meet Tall’s gaze for a second, which is more than a lot of people can say, and I feel like he wouldn’t be able to do that if he was lying completely, so maybe it’s a lie by omission, something like that?

  Or, it occurs to me, maybe he’s lying but doesn’t know it but somehow does?

  I think that made sense, at least to me.

  “Listen, Tall,” I say quietly, “I just had a thought—”

  “Good for you,” he responds. “Keep trying, the second time’s easier.”

  “Oh, ha ha, I had no idea you were a comedian.” I am glad he’s messing with me again, though. That’s more like the Tall I know. “Anyway, what if these two’re pouring in those other ingredients but they don’t know it? Like, what if they were told to do it, and then told to forget all about it? That way whoever’s behind this wouldn’t have to worry about them slipping up and telling anybody about it—or about them saying anything if they ever got questioned.”

  He’s quiet for a second, then two, then three. Finally he sighs. “You could’ve been one hell of a field agent,” he tells me. I think he means that as a good thing.

  “Yeah, well, I’m more of a pond and stream kinda guy,” I tell him, “but thanks.”

  He’s tapping his fingers against his cheek. “That would make sense,” he adds. “I may even have to recommend that we institute similar measures—assuming we deal with this situation and’re all still standing afterward.” Then he turns back to the Mismatched Twins. “Where do you keep all the ingredients? You funnel them in through these tubes, right? But each one’s got a reservoir or something, which you refill as needed?”

  Both of them nod but this time Winona actually lets Reg answer. “it’s these canisters right over here.” He leads them to the far side of the workstation, where the tubes seem to end—or begin—at a row of larger containers, each clearly labeled: salt, sugar, shortening, chocolate, and so on.

  All except the last container. It doesn’t have a label.

  “What’s in this one?” Tall asks. Each container has a big airlock-like valve on the front, complete with an old-fashioned wheel you have to turn to cycle the door open. Tall reaches out and grabs the wheel with one hand, and I can tell he’s waiting for a reply even if his tone says he’s not really expecting one.

  “I . . . don’t know,” Reg says. He looks totally bamboozled, poor guy. “That one’s usually empty in case we need a spare or have overflow.” He looks over at Winona. “Did you put anything in there?”

  “Me? I didn’t touch it!” she squawks. “But let’s find out what’s in this.”

  Everyone turns to Rosie, who nods once. “Open ’er up,” she orders. “Let’s find out what’s really going on here.”

  Tall complies, hauling on the wheel and then swinging the door open. The container is half-full of something that looks like a coarse powder and is an exciting but somehow relaxing orangish-pink. It doesn’t make my eyes bleed from looking at it, or start putting strange thoughts in my head, though admittedly I might have a hard time telling the difference there. It also doesn’t shape itself into feet and start running around going crazy shouting “I’m alive!”, which is definitely a good thing.

  Though I wouldn’t object to a knockoff of me. Then at least I’d have someone to play Scrabble with me, even if we keep coming up with the same words over and over.

  Everybody’s staring at the powder. “What is that?” Rosie asks anybody at all. “And how’n the hell’d it get here, ’cause I’ll be damned if we ever put anything like that in any of our cookies!”

  Mary steps over beside Tall and sniffs delicately at the open container. “It has a mildly bitter, metallic odor,” she confirms, and I’m pretty sure that’s at least partially for my benefit, since it’s not like I can smell through this thing. That’s the first thing going in my review, too. “I believe this is the mystery ingredient we detected.” She produces what looks like a funky penlight and dips it into the powder, then taps a sequence of tiny buttons on the handle, making the penlight’s tip glow blue. “This will give us a chemical analysis of the substance, and identify its origin if possible.”

  Tall turns his attention back to the CEO and her two mixers, which sounds almost like some kind of old-fogy rap group. “Next question,” he grates. “Who put it here?” I can tell by the way they’re quailing that he’s giving Winona and Reg the hairy eyeball. “I’m betting it’s one of you two.” They both start sputtering protests, and Tall holds up a hand. They both stop like he stole their voices, which would be even more useful than taking people’s shadows, I bet. And a lot nicer on the subway. “I know, neither of you’ve ever seen this before,” he says. Then he sighs. “Mary,” he tells my gal quietly, “we’re going to need”—he shudders just a little, making the camera twitch—“a few cookies.”

  She hesitates for a second, then nods and turns away, leaving the penlight where it is. I watch her approach Rosie and whisper something to her, then Rosie disappears back around a corner. When she returns a few seconds later, she’s got a box of Island Delights in her hand.

  “Here, have a few of these, they’ll calm your nerves,” she tells her two employees, though she doesn’t look entirely thrilled about the prospect. Both of them are happy to comply, though, and a second later they’re chowing down on the caramel-coconut-chocolate yumminess—

  —and, a second after that, they’re chomping their way straight into zombieland.

  Once it’s clear they’ve gone zombie, Tall tells them, “remember the first time you saw this powder, even if you were told to forget it.” Both of them nod. “When was that?”

  “A few minutes ago, when you opened the canister,” Winona answers. But at the same time, Reg says, “six months ago, when the woman brought it to me.”

  Tall ignores Winona and bears down on Reg, leaning in so close I can count the poor guy’s pores. Someone really ought to tell him about moisturizing cream. “Tell me about the woman.”

  “She introduced herself one Wednesday while I was having lunch at the Waffle House,” Reg answers. “She said her grandson had given her a candy bar but she couldn’t eat it because it had nuts and would I like it? Then she told me to add the powder to the cookies but not tell anyone about it, and to forget I’d done it or that it was there.”

  “What did she look like?” Tall asks, but Reg frowns.

  “Older but still nice-looking,” he replies after a second. “White hair in a bun. She had big, strong hands.”

  “What was her name?” The way the camera’s jittering ever so slightly like a dog desperately wanting to run but ordered to sit still, Tall’s gotta be quivering with anticipation. Just like those dogs.

  Unfortunately, Reg shakes his head
. “She never told me her name.”

  “Do you have any way to contact her?” Tall asks, but I can tell by his tone that he already knows the answer to that one.

  Sure enough, Reg shakes his head. “Whenever I’m running low on the powder, she somehow knows and comes to find me with more.”

  “Right.” Tall sighs. “No name, no method of contact, a vague description—she’s holding all the cards.”

  There’s a muffled beep behind him, and Mary smiles. “Not all of them, perhaps,” she argues as she sashays over to the container and retrieves her penlight doohickey. Then she holds it up right in front of her face and, I swear to God, shines the damn thing straight into her right eye! Holy crap!

  It doesn’t seem to hurt her any, though. And a second later she lowers the light and smiles. “It is called Jorbinate Sublimate,” she explains. “It is a variant of Jorbinate, a mineral most often used in the refinement cells of certain supralight fuel cells. And according to my database there is only one place in the entire galaxy where Jorbinate can be found—the Joribau Mines.”

  Why do I get the feeling that’s next on our whirlwind tour?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Picking up the spare

  “Okay, explain to me again why the Grays can’t just beam you there?”

  Tall shakes his head, dislodging a leaf that had stuck to his right temple after he sat down. The leaf apologizes and drifts away, probably looking for some other sucker to perch on. Which is good, because it was blocking part of my view. “These mines aren’t anywhere they’ve been,” he replies, using that subvocal trick again. I’ve got to learn how to do that, if for no other reason than it’d probably be a good idea to subvocalize most of the things I want to say to people. Instead of, y’know, just coming out and saying them like I do now. On the plus side, I rarely get wrong-number calls from the same person twice. “They can only program in a location if they’ve been there before.”