“Jack was pirating signals?” teased Lizzie.
This time Poly didn’t fall for it.
“Cornell’s a pirate. Got it,” said Nettie.
She turned to A.J.
“And check to see which version of the specs is on the drive. That will help determine which team is responsible for the leak.”
“Of course I’ll check the version,” said A.J. “What do you think I am? Stupid?”
Both his sisters grinned at him and when A.J. realized what he’d said, he grinned, too.
“Well, maybe…” A.J. said, answering his own question. “I’ll get on it immediately.”
“Thanks,” said Poly. “You can let us know what you learn in the morning.”
“And little brother,” Nettie added, “by that, my old roomie means she doesn’t want to be disturbed tonight.”
“Think of it as a metaphorical version of hanging a tie on her door,” said Lizzie.
“I get it,” said A.J. “Poly and Jack are going to have a good time tonight. Couldn’t happen to a nicer couple.”
The Chili Mint Duck must have been having a delayed reaction. Poly’s face turned red and I could feel my cheeks getting warm.
“On that note,” I said, rising, “it’s time for us to hit the road. Thanks for a lovely dinner.”
Poly hugged Nettie, Lizzie and A.J. in turn.
“Yes, thanks,” she said. “It was great to see you again and catch up.”
I shook A.J.’s hand without either of us playing grip one-upmanship games and hugged Lizzie while Nettie was talking.
“Thank you for more details about our industrial espionage problems,” said the older sister. “Maybe now we can put a stop to these leaks.”
Nettie stepped close and gave me a hug and a light kiss on my cheek. Her lips were cool on my skin, so I knew I must still be blushing.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” said Nettie to Poly as I deactivated the Cone of Silence field and folded back the privacy screen.
“That means anything goes, Jack,” teased Lizzie, simultaneously tweaking Poly and her sister.
“Hey,” said Poly and Nettie simultaneously. Both women feigned looks of offended dignity.
“Will we see you on the show floor tomorrow?” asked A.J. as we started to make our exit from the alcove.
Poly answered over her shoulder.
“Sure, just not too early. The odds are good it’s going to be a late night.”
That prompted the Obi-Yu siblings to tap on their water glasses again and I kissed Poly enthusiastically before escorting her to the front door. After I helped her into our autolimo and it pulled out, I wondered if I should have ordered a Thai Iced Coffee to have the stimulation needed to stay up late tonight. Then I looked at Poly sitting next to me and admired her image broadcast on the video screen in the autolimo’s roof. I decided insufficient stimulation was unlikely to be a problem. It wasn’t even half past eight and I expected the balance of the evening to be memorable.
“I like your friends,” I said.
“They like you, too.”
Poly snuggled into my shoulder.
“I’m glad we could help them with their industrial espionage problem.”
“Speaking of that,” said Poly, “do you have any ideas on where to find Cornell?”
“I might,” I said, “but right now my mind is on other things.”
I ran my palm along her arm from shoulder to elbow and Poly sighed.
“Glad to hear it,” she said softly. “Are you okay with taking our relationship to another level tonight?”
I looked at Poly, marveling at her patience with me and her willingness for us to go slow.
“I’m more than okay,” I said. “I can’t wait to get back to the hotel.”
“Do you mean that literally,” said Poly, putting her hand on my thigh.
“Ummmm…”
My face got warm again. I’d be a lot happier in our suite—with the door locked and a Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the door.
“No,” I said. “Not literally. You deserve to be savored, not gulped.”
Poly let out a different sort of sigh.
“Probably for the best,” she said, smiling. “I’ve waited this long. What’s another ten minutes?”
“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said.
“Grand Pyridian,” said the autolimo.
I helped Poly out and held her hand as we headed through the lobby and took the private elevator to our suite. I reminded Poly to behave, because there were security cameras in the elevator, but she pointed out that the cameras were monitored by A.I. units, not humans. I surrendered to her superior logic and enjoyed kissing her as we rose to the sixty-third floor.
There was a young man, rather boorish,
Who changed when he landed on Orish…
My phone jumped from my belt to our suite’s doorknob and opened its lock with my mutakey. Then it scurried inside while Poly and I followed, unwilling to acknowledge anything except each other. I couldn’t swear to it, but I think my phone put up the Do Not Disturb sign, then shut and locked the door for us.
“How does this dress come off?” I asked when I took a break from the delightful occupation of kissing Poly.
“One zipper. In the back.”
I shifted my embrace, found the zipper tab, and pulled. In the right context, the soft buzz of a zipper sliding down is one of the most erotic sounds in the world. Poly stepped back. I leaned forward so she could pull my shirt and Orishen pupa silk undershirt over my head. She tossed them over her shoulder, not caring where they landed, then shifted her body and hips so her dress rustled sensuously to the floor. Her pupa silk shirt— which made an effective corset—also came off. We embraced again, and the skin to skin contact felt so good that I wanted it to go on forever.
Poly kicked off her short heels and we were now holding each other with slightly different parts of our anatomy touching. I used my toes to remove my own footwear and returned to our previous contact equilibrium.
Later, I looked it up and confirmed that there was hardly any moon that night and the skies above Las Vegas were cloudless, but let’s just say the moon was on its way toward going behind a cloud and leave it at that. Poly and I were curled in the middle of our suite’s giant bed, oblivious to whether or not there was a video ceiling above us. I was sure I would have been oblivious to a thermonuclear explosion in the nearby Nevada desert.
The two of us were slowly getting to know each other’s bodies, experimenting with touches and turn-ons, exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, boldly going where no… Well, you get the idea. The outside world no longer existed for us; we were literally wrapped up in each other. In moments, we would be changing our status from platonic to physical lovers.
Unfortunately, it turns out I would have noticed a thermonuclear explosion, because we were disturbed by a noise at least as loud. Someone was pounding on the door to our suite with sufficient force to almost crack that portal’s two-inch thick walnut panels. Poly, who thinks faster than I do and can’t resist a joke, shouted, “My husband!”
At the time I didn’t appreciate her attempt at humor. I jumped out of bed, wrapped myself in the coverlet, and rapidly shuffled over to the door. My personal dignity was probably in negative numbers.
“Who is it and what do you want?” I said, in my best GO AWAY tone.
A scared, small, piping voice answered.
“Uncle Jack! Aunt Poly! I need your help. Mommy and Daddy are gone!”
It was Terrhi—and she was in trouble.
Chapter 15
“…acts of kindness will make those in trouble
know that they are not alone.”
— Dr. Anil Kumar Sinha
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“Terrhi, come in,” I said, holding the door open for her. All three of my Shetland pony-sized friend’s eyes were leaking tears and the robin’s egg blue juvenile spots on her pink hide had paled to a sickly mauve. I bent my knees and gave the little Dauushan girl a hug. I’d meant to reassure her, but she burst into a renewed bout of blubbering and waterworks. Poly, who had gone from naked to fully clothed in seconds, was able to calm Terrhi down for a few seconds with a hug of her own.
“There, there,” I said, holding my makeshift coverlet-covering closed with one hand and stroking Terrhi’s forehead with the other. Then I realized Terrhi wasn’t accompanied by her constant companion.
“Hey! Where’s Spike?”
Terrhi returned to sobbing and added an earsplitting wail. Poly looked over at me as if to say, “Now you’ve done it!” and hugged Terrhi tighter. Since it didn’t seem like I was doing much to calm my young friend, I disengaged and stepped away. That was a wise move, given what happened next.
Dauushans have nine noses—three primary trunks that each split into three smaller manipulating trunks—and all of Terrhi’s were now running. I walked over to our king-sized bed and removed a pillowcase from one of its larger pillows. It seemed like there must have been twenty-seven pillows of various shapes and sizes enthusiastically scattered around its surface and the floor. Poly and I had been responsible for most of the scattering.
“Here you go, Sweetie,” I said, holding out the pillowcase.
The hexapod Dauushan girl took it in one six-fingered hand and held it up to her trunks, blowing her noses in a discordant polyphonic crescendo. Poly stepped away before the noise from the tremendous honks made her temporarily deaf. I went to the suite’s kitchen to brew us some tea—with lots of sugar—while Poly stayed close to Terrhi and kept a comforting hand on her back.
I set the suite’s dining room table for tea, using a matching china serving bowl as Terrhi’s cup. Terrhi loved playing hostess and made Spike, her pet tri-sabertooth cat, sit through dozens of tea parties. I hoped that another tea party would feel familiar and help her get a grip on herself, so we could find out what happened.
I was bringing linen napkins—it was a high-end suite—over to the dining room table when my coverlet-covering caught on the side of the kitchen island and started to come off. I tried to grab it while still holding on to the napkins, lost my balance, and ended up doing an unplanned forward roll across the floor. I landed in an untidy lump on the hardwood, part of my body still covered by the traitorous coverlet. I was making various ouch noises and trying to calculate just how far my dignity score had fallen. Poly started laughing, which didn’t help, but then Terrhi’s sobs turned temporarily into laughter and gave the little girl a chance to regain her emotional equilibrium.
“Sorry, Uncle Jack,” said Terrhi between bouts of giggles. “I didn’t mean to laugh, but I couldn’t stop myself.”
“No offense taken,” I said, catching my reflection in one of the suite’s floor-to-ceiling windows. I really did look funny. “Poly, can you pour tea for Terrhi while I excuse myself and put some clothes on?”
Terrhi kept giggling as she watched me try to hold up the coverlet as a makeshift sarong while I shuffled my way to the bedroom to rummage in my suitcase for more appropriate clothing. The giggling mercifully stopped when I was out of sight. When I emerged from my refuge wearing black jeans and a black long-sleeved t-shirt, Terrhi was standing next to the dining room table daintily slurping Earl Grey from her serving bowl. Poly was sitting next to Terrhi with her teacup carefully nestled between her palms. I joined them and held out my empty cup. With exaggerated hostess manners, Terrhi lifted the teapot and poured out some of the hot infusion.
“One lump or two, Uncle Jack?”
“Better make it three,” I said. “I expect it’s going to be a long night.”
“Please tell us what happened,” said Poly. “Where did your mom and dad go?”
“And Spike!” said Terrhi, starting to get agitated again.
“And Spike.” Poly and I both said it at the same time. Jinx.
Terrhi took a big gulp of tea, blew her noses on the pillowcase with a sound like a dozen kazoos on steroids, and began to speak in halting sentences.
“Daddy had bought me a new toy called a Slinky from the big toy store in Caesar’s Palace and I was out in the emergency stairwell playing with it and watching it walk down the steps by itself. Sniffle. Daddy got me a jumbo-sized one, so it could handle Dauushan-sized stairs. Honk. Spike didn’t want to come with me. Huh huh huh. The echoes in the stairwells hurt his ears, I think, or maybe it’s that weird metal hissing sound the Slinky makes, I don’t know. Snort.”
“Got it,” I said. “You weren’t in the suite with your mom and dad and Spike.”
I was trying to encourage Terrhi to get on with her story. I had a feeling that we’d end up having to act quickly to deal with whatever had happened. Poly looked at me critically, as if her eyes were saying “Give the kid a break.” Terrhi wasn’t picking up on my hints to cut to the chase.
“I got my Slinky to walk itself all the way down a whole flight of stairs and even took a video of it on my phone…”
Terrhi patted a device half the size of a skateboard in a pouch on her cylindrical left leg.
“Then I went back to our suite to show it to Mom and Dad and Uncle Diágo and Spike.”
Poly and I exchanged another look. Uncle Diágo? Queen Sherrhi’s bodyguard? Who knew? Maybe she didn’t mean he was literally her uncle. He could have an honorary status like Poly and me. Terrhi continued speaking.
“I really like the suites in the Pink Palace, don’t you, Uncle Jack? I can call it the Pink Palace, can’t I?”
“Everybody does, Terrhi,” said Poly, who was now also trying to hurry the little girl along.
The Royal Dauushan is a huge hotel. I guess it needs to be to hold guests that average a bit larger in size than an African bull elephant. It covered four city blocks, but was only five stories tall—Dauushan’s aren’t fond of heights. Its architectural style could best be described as monumental, in a Stonehenge sort of way, but what really caught the eye was the fact that it was relentlessly, exuberantly pink with exterior and interior walls a vibrant fuchsia color that could almost sear human eyeballs. Some shades of that color are soft and gently whisper a quiet pastel, while the Pink Palace—I mean, the Royal Dauushan—literally screams pink, pink, pink, pink, PINK at the top of its lungs. Tomáso once told me Dauushan eyes see pink as a neutral, no matter how saturated the color is, so seeing walls painted that color wasn’t a strain for his species.
“When I got back to the suite…” continued Terrhi.
“Which suite?” I asked, then realized the question was stupid.
“The Royal suite, of course. Mom is the queen and I am the princess.”
I nodded.
“I walked around all the rooms and yelled, ‘Is anybody here?’ but no one answered.”
“Did you see anything unusual in the suite?” asked Poly. “Any signs of a struggle?”
“There was a vase of pink megaroses overturned on the floor in the middle of the living room. I could feel the water on the carpet underneath my feet.”
“Good,” said Poly. “Anything else?”
“The doors to the balcony were open.”
Bingo. Queen Sherrhi, Tomáso, Diágo and Spike must have been taken out of the hotel on industrial-sized hovercars, just like the black hats had used to kidnap Terrhi back on First Contact Day. Given the amount of construction going on in Las Vegas, three more heavy-duty hovercars wouldn’t stand out.
“What did you do when you couldn’t find anybody?” asked Poly.
“I got out of the Pink Palace in a hurry and ran five blocks to the Grand Pyridian to find you. I went down the emergency stairs instead of the elevator.
”
“Smart move, kid,” I said. “Good thinking.”
Terrhi beamed. She was starting to get herself back together and I could tell she was stoking up adult Dauushan-sized anger toward whoever had taken her parents, her uncle, and her pet.
“Was there any kind of note lying around?” I asked. “From your parents or from their abductors?”
“You mean like a ransom note made from cutting and pasting letters from magazines or one of those crazy-looking printer fonts?”
“Exactly like that.”
“Or a word written in the dust on a sideboard or in lipstick on a mirror,” said Poly.
“There wasn’t anything like that, Aunt Poly,” said Terrhi. “The maids were cleaning all the time—there was hardly any dust—and Dauushans don’t use lipstick.”
I nodded. It was a long shot.
“There was one thing,” said my honorary niece.
“What’s that?”
“The word CROATOAN was carved into the surface of the coffee table.”
Ouch, I thought.
“You got me! A hit, a palpable hit!” I exclaimed.
Now I knew Terrhi was starting to recover from her immediate trauma. If she could joke about finding the word carved into a tree at the site of the lost Roanoke Colony, she must be doing better. I wondered when she’d had a chance to study American history?
Before I could begin to think about next steps, Poly’s phone rang. She checked the caller ID and put it on speaker.
“Poly, this is A.J.” said the youngest Obi-Yu sibling. “I know you said not to call you tonight, but this is an emergency. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“No,” said my partner, “that happened half an hour ago.”
Xenotech What Happens: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 3) Page 12