Wait! Backpack?
I checked three of its smaller compartments and found the controller fob in the third. I opened the van, climbed in, and directed it back to the rental office.”
“What a night, huh?” said Poly.
“You could say that.”
“Chit was home by the time the autocab dropped me off at my apartment. She was relaxing in a bowl full of sand with a cocktail umbrella planted in it, sipping on some sort of high-proof liquid that smelled like lemon-scented paint thinner.”
“How was your week?” Chit asked.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Sure I would,” said Chit. “What did I miss?”
* * * * *
Poly was going to kiss me again when her phone rang. She pulled it out of her back pocket, looked at the sender, and answered it. I was close enough to hear the conversation.
“Hey Roomie! This is Nettie. The autolimo will be downstairs in half an hour. I hope you two have worked up an appetite.”
“We’ll be there with bells on,” Poly replied. “See you all soon.”
She hung up.
“First dibs on the shower.”
“It’s big enough for two,” said Poly. “I’ll scrub your back.”
“Deal,” I said.
Half an hour wasn’t long enough for more than that, but the night was young.
Chapter 13
“Thai food must be the most popular cuisine in the world.”
— Love.Poppy.Eat Blog
I was looking forward to dinner at a fancy restaurant on the Strip on the Obi-Yu’s dime and a chance to see where the uber-rich ate. That’s why I was surprised when our autolimo took us into a part of town that was looking decidedly sketchy. Tattoo parlors, massage parlors, and betting parlors lined the street and made me wonder what Nettie, Lizzie, and A.J. had planned.
Poly didn’t seem worried. We were relaxing on the well-padded bench seat at the back of the vehicle, enjoying the unaccustomed luxury. She was snuggling against my shoulder, enjoying the smell of the leather upholstery and playing with the ceiling video display system. She fiddled with it until it showed an overhead view of the two of us.
“Hey, Jack,” she said, cuddling closer and putting one hand on my leg. “Want to fool around?”
I looked above me, enjoying the overhead view of Poly’s legs and scooped neckline on the monitors. She wasn’t wearing her infinitely adaptable Orishen morphabric dress, but the little black number she had on was a knockout. I wasn’t too shabby, either.
“We don’t know how much farther it is to the restaurant. I don’t want an appetizer to make me hungry when I can’t eat the main course.”
“Mmmmm…” said Poly. I could sense that her imagination was taking her somewhere—and even my intermediately prurient mind could guess where.
“Maybe our suite back at the hotel has ceiling video screens?” I suggested to distract her. “We never checked.”
“I’ll put that on my list,” said Poly. “Don’t fill up on dinner.” She wiggled an eyebrow at me. “Be sure to save room for dessert.”
“The two of us are about as subtle as a couple of Dauushan tourists in Times Square.”
“Come on,” said Poly. “I was being subtle.”
I stifled a laugh as she continued.
“I could have said something like, ‘Hey, sailor, after dinner, do you want to come back to my place and…’”
“We’re here!” I said, interrupting.
The autolimo had slowed and was turning off Sahara into an even more sketchy-looking shopping center that had somehow managed to escape urban renewal despite Sin City’s relentless march of redevelopment. I checked to make sure my phone was securely fastened to my belt and confirmed that Poly wasn’t carrying an evening bag that could be stolen. The area was so run down I expected to see drive-through pickup windows for the few remaining drugs that were still illegal.
A faded, peeling sign said we were entering Village Square Commercial Center. The buildings were one story and uniformly topped with cracked red tile roofs. Dozens of establishments—if that wasn’t too grand a term—including a roller derby center, a small theater, and an off-brand cell phone store occupied the storefronts, along with a motley assortment of clubs, bars, gyms and spas. They were laid out as an open square with more shops forming a smaller square inside it. Parking spots marked with lines that may have once been white filled the empty space in between.
There were quite a few Mexican restaurants, an Israeli restaurant, and what looked like a Cantonese place, if I was reading the ideograms on its sign correctly. Then again, with a name like Happy Joy Palace, its primary business might not be serving food. The autolimo pulled into a space in front of a restaurant in the center section with a hand-lettered sign that read “The Cornish Pasty Company.” It looked like a cross between a run-down British pub and a bakery. Next to it was something I took to be a Turkish hookah lounge.
“We’re having dinner at a pastry shop?” asked Poly.
“Look again,” I said. “It says ‘Cornish Pasty.’”
“For strippers from the southwestern United Kingdom?”
“No,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “They’re baked balls of dough with meat and potatoes inside. I tried them when my mom was working on a wave-power project near Penzance.”
“Were there pirates?”
“Not since the seventeenth century.”
“Damn,” said Poly, sounding regretful.
“Never say a big, big D,” I chided.
We were saved from more riffs on Gilbert and Sullivan lyrics by Nettie, Lizzie and A.J., who suddenly appeared from the door to the hookah lounge. Poly and I disentangled our limbs and got out to greet them.
“We wondered what was keeping the two of you so busy in the limo,” teased Nettie.
“Keep your mind out of the gutter, roomie,” said Poly with a grin. “We were trying to figure out if our chariot was lost, considering the local ambiance.” She waved her hand to take in the shopping center’s down on its luck surroundings.
“No way,” said Lizzie. “We wanted to introduce you to Komol, our favorite restaurant in Vegas.”
“Serving Cornish pasties?” I asked.
“Serving great food,” said A.J. “It’s the top-rated place for Thai in the city.”
I took another look at the sign for the Turkish hookah lounge. The fine print did say “Thai” and there were small notices in the lower front window from Keen’s Guides, Zomato-Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Michelin-Fodor’s. Otherwise, the exterior of the place looked like something from a seedier area of wartime London after a week of Nazi bombing.
“If you say so,” I said.
When A.J. opened the door to Komol and cooking smells began to escape, my nose convinced me not to judge a dining establishment by its facade. A young waiter escorted us to a round table for six in a private alcove on in the back. From our high energy banter earlier, I could tell that dinner was going to be memorable.
The interior of the place was decorated in Thai tacky, with lots of gilded pictures of kings and queens and royal barges gracing the walls. Some joker had hung a Thai elephant-god picture and substituted a multi-trunked adult Dauushan instead of an Asian pachyderm. The result—sort of a Ganesh meets Cthulhu mix—made me smile.
When it was time to order, Poly and I deferred to the Obi-Yu siblings. Nettie consulted her brother and sister and put together a delicious set of appetizers and entrees for us. One of my favorites was a cold Thai green papaya salad with lime juice, fish sauce, cashews, long beans and cilantro that dripped all over the oversized napkin I’d wisely positioned as a bib. Poly raved about Go-See-Mee, a dish of yellow noodles topped with chicken, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, snow peas, baby corn and green onions.
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Lizzie made sure we sampled Vegetarian Galactic Green Curry—colorful Orishen, Pyr, and Tōdon veggies over Nicósn wild “rice” with a hot Thai-style sauce—a perfect example of Pan-Asian Galactic fusion cuisine. The Orishen vegetables changed shapes as I tried to spear them with my fork, so I asked for tongs and exercised the dining skills I’d mastered back in my grad school days to corral them. I shared some of my captured veggies with Poly and was rewarded with a kiss while everyone else at the table tapped their silverware against their water glasses like we were the bride and groom at a wedding. I blushed, though it could have just been a flush from the spices in the Chili Mint Duck dish Lizzie had requested. Poly kissed me again and I gave up worrying about petty semantic distinctions.
Conversation during the meal was loud, but casual. Nettie and Poly caught up on former classmates. Lizzie had only been a year behind them at Harvard and split her conversation with Poly, her sister, and me. A.J. and I discussed movies. We were both fans of Aydok Grox, the Short Pâkk action hero, and loved him in the remake of Conan the Barbarian, especially the scene where he takes down a three-headed dragon bare-handed. Casting eighty-two year old Arnold Schwarzenegger to play the ancient, evil, undead wizard, Thulsa Doom, was inspired. I could still hear him saying “I’ll be baaack” in a thick Austrian accent just before Conan’s sword removed his head. Lizzie said the remake of Red Sonja was better and A.J. and I both wholeheartedly agreed. Even at age fifty, six foot three Gwendoline Christie—Captain Phasma from the Star Wars movies—kicked butt in the title role.
When we cleaned our plates—except for stray drops of sauce—our server cleared the table and asked if we wanted dessert. Nettie, Lizzie and A.J. all asked for Komol’s signature vegan coconut ice cream, and despite our earlier talk about saving room for a different sort of dessert, Poly and I both agreed to make it unanimous. When the cold ice cream had disappeared on its way to counteract the hot peppers we’d already consumed, one of our servers pulled a folding screen across the entrance to the alcove and triggered its built-in Cone of Silence to prevent prying ears from overhearing. With the COS-field in place, the restaurant’s ambient noise vanished and the five of us were left in a hushed, acoustically isolated sanctuary.
“Okay, spill it, you two,” said A.J. “How can you help solve our piracy problem?”
“We’d been having problems of our own back in Atlanta. A guy who called himself Cornell tried to kidnap the Queen of Dauush and conspired to release a plague that could turn half the civilized galaxy into subservient zombies,” I said.
“Sounds like a big-time operator,” said Lizzie.
“That’s not completely accurate, but it’s close enough,” said Poly. “We think Cornell’s more of a first assistant henchman than an evil mastermind. The point is, Jack and I saw him here at GALTEX this morning.”
I felt something tug at my side. My phone was up on the table, waving several extruded appendages. It leaned back and projected a holographic video image a foot above its screen. Cornell was standing in the Chapultepec & Castle booth next to a short, round man in a dark business suit and handing a thumb drive shaped like Boba Fett to a tall woman wearing a navy pantsuit and a patriotic scarf.
“The audio was impossible to retrieve,” said my phone, “but analysis of Cornell’s lip movements indicated he said something about ‘This being what was requested.’” My phone paused for effect. “‘And GalCon Systems’ latest something.’ The last word was unidentifiable.”
“What are Scott Winfield and Josephine Johnson doing talking to your henchman person?” demanded Nettie.
“You know them?” asked Poly.
“Unfortunately,” replied Nettie. “They’re the chairman and the CEO of Chapultepec & Castle. Mom and George have to hold their noses whenever they interact with them at telecom industry functions.”
“George?” I asked Poly, quietly.
“George Crispos, the CEO of GalCon Systems,” she said. “Nettie’s mother is the chairman.”
“Oh, of course,” I said. “That George.”
Poly turned her attention back to Nettie.
“He’s not our henchman person. Cornell seems to be a mercenary henchman who’s been a particular thorn in our side lately.”
“And now we get him,” said Lizzie. “Joy.”
“The specs for the Mark IV were probably on that thumb drive,” lamented A.J. “Five years of careful research and development stolen in seconds. Nice mutacase, by the way.”
“Thanks,” said my phone.
“The Mark IV?” asked Poly.
“The GalCon 26000 Mark IV congruent router,” I said. “Twice the number of ports, four times the throughput, and automatic signal translation for all the major galactic standard protocols. I can’t wait to get one and put it through its paces.”
“You may be able to buy one from Chapultepec & Castle before ours is released,” grumbled A.J. “Blasted pirates.”
“At least we’ve got a video of the exchange,” said Lizzie.
“But without confirmation of what was on the drive, the video is useless,” said Nettie, frowning. “Poly’s henchman could have been sharing soufflé recipes, not technical specs, for all we know.”
“He’s not my henchman,” said Poly. Nettie was really good at pushing Poly’s buttons. I took mental notes.
“We have to get that thumb drive,” said A.J.
“You’re not thinking it through,” I said. “The thumb drive could have been erased or destroyed by now. We need to interrogate Cornell.”
“What if he doesn’t know what’s on the drive?” asked A.J.
“He’ll know who gave it to him,” I said. “That’s a step farther up the chain than you’ve gotten so far.”
“And what if your henchman just clams up and keeps his mouth shut once you catch him?” asked Nettie.
Poly gave me a knowing smile.
“We have ways of making him talk,” she said.
We did indeed. Hu Zahn Fierst’s telepathy spray would help us learn everything Cornell knew. But how could we interrogate him without Cornell learning everything we knew? I had some big ideas on how to pull that off.
My phone canceled its holographic video projection and flowed over to me on several dozen pseudopods.
“Jack,” it said.
“What?”
“There’s something relevant to this discussion in your left front pocket.”
“Okay,” I said, not remembering putting anything there other than my Swiss Army knife.
I reached into the relevant pocket and my fingers touched something small and plastic, like the head of a Lego character. When I pulled it out I saw it was a black Darth Vader helmet with an embedded thumb drive.
“Where did that come from?” asked Poly.
I stared at my phone and cleared my throat.
“Yes, where did it come from?” I said, using a tone a parent might use when addressing a naughty child.
“Sorry,” said my phone. “The drive was in Cornell’s pocket.”
“And you found it there?”
“It seemed appropriate to investigate Cornell’s person while hanging on his belt earlier today.”
“Good thinking,” I said, praise replacing chastisement. “But why didn’t you mention it sooner?”
“Being thrown to the ground when detected by Cornell must have affected this unit’s short-term memory,” said my phone.
I held the Darth Vader helmet flash drive out in the palm of my hand, close to my phone.
“What’s on it?” I asked.
My phone extended a pseudopod configured to mate with the thumb drive, attached to it, and started humming.
“Why are you humming?” asked A.J.
Nettie, Lizzie, Poly and I all answered simultaneously.
&
nbsp; “Because it doesn’t know the words.”
A.J. slapped his palm to the center of his forehead and looked sheepish.
My phone, however, didn’t get the joke.
“This unit has access to a database of lyrics for all popular Terran songs published in the last two hundred years,” it said. “It is highly unlikely that the words to any song are not known.”
“Then why were you humming?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t being set up.
“This unit was not humming,” it said. “The sound being produced is the human expression used when something is interesting or intriguing.”
“Hmmmm…” said Poly.
“Exactly,” said my phone.
“Why ‘hmmmmm…’?” I asked.
“The drive appears to contain complete technical and manufacturing specifications for the GalCon 26000 Mark IV congruent router.”
Chapter 14
“…this is not how a climax should be written.”
— Salman Rushdie
“Which one of you wants this thing?” I said, tossing the Darth Vader helmet thumb drive up in the air and catching it.
“A.J.’s interning with the New Products team,” said Nettie. “He can take it.”
“Yeah,” said Lizzie, “Nettie and I have already done New Products.”
“Great,” I said, flipping the drive to A.J.
He caught it and nodded. “I’ll check it out and compare it with our specs.”
“Keep an eye out for subtle coding changes and signal rerouting algorithms,” said Poly. “Jack first met Cornell when he was pirating signals from Georgia legislature broadcasts.”
Xenotech What Happens: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 3) Page 11