"She knew you had plans, Ed."
"Yeah, but she wouldn't just blow them off, Sel. You know Linda's not like that."
"Yeah, I know. I have to get to class, Ed. I'll call you later on the pad. Thanks for letting me off the hook, by the way."
"You're too smart for me, lady. I may have to trade you in."
Selena snorted a laugh and said, "Don't be in too big a hurry; you'll be rid of me soon enough."
"You'll only be in Tallahassee. Not far at all."
"It's far enough, dammit. All my friends are here. Look, I really have to get in there, Ed. Later."
"Okay. Bye."
I was aware of Sue's gaze as I dissolved the datapad.
"Yes, ma'am? A question?"
"Just thinking," said Sue. "You timed your call to Linda, expecting it would be a short one, then you called Selena when you knew she wouldn't have much time to talk."
"Yup."
"What if Joanie relents and reschedules again?"
"Very doubtful, but if so, then I'll call Linda, thank her, and pick up Selena on the way to the convention."
"Just like that," Sue stated rather flatly.
"Yeah, 'just like that'," I replied. "What's wrong with it?"
"Do you ever wonder if people sometimes resent being handed your 'solutions' to various problems, Ed?"
Giving her a direct look, I said, "No. If they don't like my solutions, they can say something other than 'thanks, Ed'."
"What if they'd prefer to devise their own solutions without your assistance?"
Shrugging, I said, "No problem. They're free to do so, just like I did just now. The biggest part of my scheduling with Linda for the fifteenth had to do with covering my own ass, Sue. I can't fix Sel's problems with her mother and I can't see letting something as trivial as an SF convention cause an all-around confrontation."
As we neared Spring Hill, I felt another presence nearby and looked around for Steph, but the seats and the deck behind me were empty. Sitting still for a moment, I closed my eyes and tried to fix a direction to the feeling. There. Got it.
I opened my eyes to find myself looking beyond the flitter at what appeared to be empty sky. Wrong? Nope. Felt right. I gave a little wave and keyed my comm implant as I patted the seat next to mine.
"Hi, Steph. I saved you a seat."
Something shimmery happened to the edge of our field as she appeared by the console and said, "That's Elkor's flitter. I'm about to do some prospecting."
The edge of the field stabilized and seemed to merge like a huge soap bubble with the field from Elkor's cargo flitter.
Steph smiled at me and said, "I wondered if you'd be able to detect me beyond two fields. That's a fascinating talent, Ed. Would you and Sue like to join me?"
"Well, gee, lady, let me check with my social secretary." I turned to Sue. "Care to go prospecting, milady?"
Sue laughed and said, "Whither thou goest, I go. For the next year, anyway."
"Sounds good to me. Glad to have such decorative company, too. See if Tiger's interested."
Nope. Tiger was bored; ready to go home. Truthfully, I sometimes got bored as hell aboard the flitter, too, but I could entertain myself with a datapad when the action was slow.
We stopped to let Tiger into the house, then Sue guided our flitter to follow Elkor's to a spot not far from the Louisiana coastline and the wide mouth of the Mississippi River.
I'll admit it. I was mystified. Steph had said 'prospecting', not 'marine salvage'. This area was one of the most well-charted regions on Earth and the water wasn't all that deep. If there was anything worthwhile down there, it seemed likely that someone would have already gone after it.
Watching a lone shrimpboat head toward shore, I keyed my implant, then asked, "Uh, Steph..? You said 'prospecting'. I kind of expected us to end up in a desert."
Disappearing from Elkor's flitter, Steph appeared in the seat next to mine and said, "I have reason to believe that scanning riverbeds may be worthwhile."
Calling up an oversized field screen, she caused a picture of the Mississippi River to appear, then highlighted several areas along its meandering path.
Elkor's flitter descended abruptly. As soon as its field disconnected from ours, it disappeared. Some moments later I saw a slight disturbance below as it plunged into the waters of the alluvial basin.
Steph said, "The flitter will scan the riverbed to a depth of one hundred and fifty feet."
I didn't have to ask why she was probing so deeply; the Mississippi partly followed a fault line and was known for frequent course changes and for carrying and depositing massive quantities of soil.
Touching the map, Steph said, "Floods along this river have washed away entire towns. Boats have sunk; often those of traders. During the Civil War, a boat carrying military plunder reportedly sank a few miles south of Vicksburg."
Touching a spot just below St. Louis, she said, "In this region, construction dredging discovered several automobiles, all of which had been manufactured prior to 1931. Bullet holes and human remains were found in several of the cars and a safe was found chained to the remains of a flatbed truck."
"Probably from the booze wars," I said. "The Eighteenth Amendment -- Prohibition -- created criminals where we'd only had drunks before. What did they find in the safe?"
"Jewelry, two handguns, and the remnants of money and documents."
Grinning, I said, "Ah-hah. Sunken treasure. Is that what inspired your sudden interest in the Mississippi?"
Returning my grin with a wry one of her own, Steph said, "Rivers are much easier to search than oceans, and while they may not hold as much treasure, I expect to be able to justify my efforts. The results of my scans will be made available at prices that will vary according to purpose."
"So the real treasure is in the number of times you can sell the info. Sounds good. How long will it take to scan the whole Mississippi River?"
"Including tributaries and allowing time for retrievals of minor valuables not buried too deeply, I'd say about a month."
When I laughed, she looked at me questioningly.
"Quote;" I said, "'I'd say about a month.' Steph, you're a marvel. I remember when you couldn't make a guesstimate."
"The correct word is 'wouldn't', Ed."
"Uh, huh. A month doesn't seem like enough time, ma'am. You sure you didn't misplace a decimal or something?"
Steph gave me a wry, dry look and Sue snickered. Raising my hands as if to protest, I stepped back toward the cooler.
"Yes. Well," I said, reaching into the cooler for a Dr Pepper, "Sorry. Of course I'd never seriously question your math, milady. Do please forgive me. What have you found so far?"
She grinned as she changed the picture on the datapad. A glistening cube appeared on Elkor's flitter's deck. The view zoomed in and I saw that the cube was composed of jewelry; mostly rings and necklaces, apparently within a square field.
Stacks of bundled money sat to one side of the cube, possibly within their own field. Figuring that a dollar is roughly six inches long, the jewelry cube had to be about three feet tall and equally wide.
Behind the jewelry cube and the stacks of bills were stacks of coins. For a moment I wondered why there were so many small stacks and loose coins, then I realized that she'd likely sorted them by type and possibly date.
"Damn," I muttered. "You've been busy, Steph. Did all this stuff come from one place?"
"It was recovered from a twenty-mile section of the river. I've matched most of the jewelry to the inventories of shops that were lost in floods. Most of the bills were in safes and some were in a large camera case in the trunk of a 1988 Cadillac. The car also held the remains of four people."
"Sounds interesting. Were there drugs and weapons, too?"
Nodding, she said, "The driver was William L. Washington, of Moline, Illinois. He and his friends were in possession of $1,250,000 and several bundles of cocaine when they drowned. I took the money and left the drugs and weapons. Their locat
ion will be part of the data received by the authorities."
"Hm. If you tell them where to look, they'll have to at least consider the idea of going after them. Can they can get to the car readily?"
She shook her head.
"No. It's in one of the most turbulent parts of the river. An attempt to retrieve it would be very difficult and expensive."
"But you'd contract to bring it up for a fee? One that might make the recovery worthwhile?"
Steph smiled. "Of course."
"What are you going to say when they ask if you had salvage permits for this venture?"
"I'll tell them the truth just as you would, Ed; that I never entered the water, therefore I needed no permits."
Snorting a laugh, I said, "Okay, but what about the jewelry? Some of the stones may be laser-engraved and they'll wonder how you raised them... No, wait, you could shear off the markings and sell the jewelry through the same people who bought your gold. No markings, no problem."
Sue said, "Shearing would ruin the symmetry of a stone, Ed. It would be better to reconstitute those regions."
Laughing again, I said, "They'd need an electron microscope to spot a symmetry problem. I'd go with the method that costs the least in time and energy, milady. Most people aren't really all that knowledgeable or picky about diamonds in jewelry and you'd be wholesaling the stuff as salvaged merchandise."
Steph nodded. "Generally true, but I'd prefer to reconstitute the etched areas. The difference in time and energy expended would be negligible."
The shrimpboat below had stopped. I checked the sun against my hand. Three fingers to sunset, and shrimpers often didn't return to port until well after dark.
I asked Sue, "Is that boat calling for help?"
"No."
"Their nets aren't in the water and they're heading in kind of early. And you almost never see a shrimpboat stop at sea; there's no money in it. Let's check it out."
We almost instantly dropped the few thousand feet to hover beside the boat. A man in the wheelhouse was messing with a radio and apparently becoming more frustrated by the second. Another stood smoking a cigarette in the stern, staring at the open engine room hatchway.
A small plume of blue-black smoke came from the hatchway, then two men emerged. The men held an angry conference on the deck behind the wheelhouse, then one of them threw up his hands and went to sit on the nets.
"Sue, how far is it to shore?"
"Twenty-six miles. Are you thinking of towing them?"
"No, I was thinking of calling it in for them. That boat's all steel and looks kind of heavy. Is towing an option?"
"It is if they have a towline."
"Then let's decloak this starship and talk to them."
She dropped our field and I yelled, "Hey! Want some help?"
A couple of the guys just stood staring at us. One of the other two almost dove into the wheelhouse, and the guy he'd been arguing with turned to face us with a look of startlement that bordered shock.
Sue fielded me across to their deck and held me a few feet above it, where I asked, "Permission to come aboard?"
The guy by the wheelhouse seemed to gather himself a bit, then said, "Sure. Who are you?"
As Sue lowered me to the deck, I said, "Someone who can tow you into port if you have a line. Are you the captain?"
He shook his head. "Yes, but we don't have a towline."
Keying my implant, I asked Sue, "Would an anchor chain work?"
"Uh... I don't know," said the guy. "I guess so."
"Yes," said Sue.
"Good," I said, then to the guy, "Does this thing have manual steering, or do you need the engines running?"
"I can steer without engines," he said.
I gave him a nod and went forward to look at the anchor. It was a standard double-hook, but it went through a hole at the gunwhale. I asked Sue if that would be a problem and she said that it would only affect the speed of the tow.
The captain had followed me forward. We paid out some anchor chain and Sue fielded the anchor to her deck, then brought me back aboard the flitter. The captain then took the wheel and waved that he was ready.
To me, it seemed that the anchor was simply lying on the deck, but as the chain pulled tight with pops and bangs and we began to move forward, the anchor didn't budge.
The shrimp boat was cutting a decent bow wake as we neared the mouth of the channel that led to the boat's registered dock. Sue slowed us down until we were crawling along and eased the boat against the dock. Two of the guys jumped off the boat to secure it to the pilings.
"Ladies," I said, "Do we want to stick around?"
"Not particularly," said Steph.
"Nor I," said Sue.
"Same here," I said. "It's almost dinnertime."
We waved to the people on the boat and on the dock as Sue let the anchor fall into the water by the boat, then she put the fields up and we lifted toward Florida.
When we arrived in Spring Hill, we stopped at a Checkers and I bought a big burger and fries at the walkup window, then we headed for the house.
"Ed," said Sue, then she fell silent. Although she said no more, her gaze was fixed on my bag of food.
"Yes?" I asked as we landed.
"Never mind. Steph informed me that she's also criticized your diet on occasion."
I looked at Steph and said, "Thank you."
Sue said, "I wouldn't mind cooking for you."
"But I'd mind. It's something I don't like to do, so it isn't something I'd ask you to do."
"You'd rather eat..." she nodded at the bag, "That stuff?"
"Yeah. Sometimes. This is one of those times."
Standing stiffly, Sue asked, "Don't you have any concern for your health, Ed?"
Enough. I took a fry out of the bag and munched it as I looked at her severely disapproving expression.
"Hm," I said. "Not enough salt. I wanna be able to hear my arteries slam shut when I eat stuff like this. We'll have to try someplace else next time."
"Sarcasm is unwarranted, Ed."
"Well, you didn't seem to be getting my message, Sue."
"You don't have to get defensive, either."
"That wasn't defensive. Defensive would be if I flatly told you to mind your own business, but I haven't said anything like that 'cuz I'm a total gentleman."
Steph snorted a laugh. Sue glared and disappeared.
"Steph," I said, "Couldn't you have shared a few more of your experiences with her? The ones about me, anyway?"
"I gave Sue a thorough dossier on you, Ed. She knew what you'd say if she criticized your feeding habits." With a grin, she said, "She's a new entity, Ed, not simply another copy of me. Some things she'll have to hear for herself and may be less inclined to accept without discussion."
"Oh, great," I said, stepping off the flitter. "You did make it clear to her that she wasn't intended to be my mother, right?"
Steph laughed and Sue reappeared directly in my path and rather stridently said, "Telling you when you're mistreating yourself is simply another of my many duties."
"Strike that duty off your list, please."
"I'm afraid I can't honor that request, Ed."
"Well, then, now it's no longer a request, and you will honor a direct order."
Sue came to attention and saluted me, and in a flat tone said, "Oh, yes, sir, Captain, sir!" then she disappeared.
What presence of hers that I was normally able to feel seemed to disappear with her. Really gone? Or just lurking at the edge of sensor range?
Steph gave me an impassive expression and said nothing.
I nodded for her to come with me and started for the house again as I asked, "Is this something I'm supposed to live with or train out of her?"
"Would you ask that question if she were a real woman?"
With a sigh and a glance at her, I said, "No, ma'am. If I got that kind of crap from a real woman after only a few days, I'd just thank her for her time and lose her phone number, and you already
knew that. If I'll have to put up with much of this kind of crap... Well, you said I could have a replacement."
In a rather cool tone, Steph said, "That would be up to you, of course, but if you return her, it could be quite a while before we could place her with someone again."
Waving a hand dismissively, I said, "You'd put her to sleep until then, wouldn't you? She wouldn't feel a thing. Why can't you just program that cranky streak out of her?"
Shaking her head, Steph said, "Sue's agreement with us allows her to develop her own personality. Unless she violates the strictures of her primary programming, we are bound against tampering with her data."
I let myself into the house, closed the front door, and put my bagged dinner on the kitchen counter, then said, "You spoiled me, Steph. I'd never really be satisfied with a standard core, but I won't play 'tame that shrew' with my flitter pilot."
Steph said nothing as I unbagged the food and tore off a bit of the burger for Tiger, who'd come to investigate. I put the bit of burger on the windowsill and lifted him up there, then put the rest of the food on a paper plate and moved it to the table.
Turning to face Steph, I said, "I think the fact that Sue's not you is tainting my judgment of her. Do you think so, too?"
Shrugging slightly, Steph said, "It's a possibility."
"You'll let me know if you think I'm being unfair, right?"
Nodding with a small smile, she said, "You're being unfair."
"We can discuss it later. Care to visit for a while?"
Nodding again, she sat down and said, "Yes, I would."
We talked for more than an hour, but most of it was little more than trivia having nothing to do with Sue. I just wanted Steph there for a while; to have her familiar presence near and to hear her voice as I looked at her. I figured she was doing a hundred other things remotely as she sat there with me.
When the phone rang around eight, I let the machine pick it up and waited to hear who was calling.
Selena said, "Ed, I just wanted to let you know that I may have to go to Melbourne this weekend. My brother's visiting."
As she spoke, Steph stood up and gave me a little 'bye-bye' wave with a small smile, then disappeared.
I extended a field tendril to pick up the receiver and said, "Hi, Sel. Be sure to wear your flak-proof undies. He doesn't think you ought to be hanging around with me, either."
3rd World Products, Inc., Book 4 Page 55