Book 4: 3rd World Products, Inc.

by Ed Howdershelt

  "He's an exhibitionist, too,” said Sue.

  "Hey,” I said, “The idea is to make ‘em want their own PFM's isn't it? Bet we could sell one to just about everyone here in the next thirty minutes."

  "Thanks, but not today,” said Steph. “I want my company in place first. We now have Tiger aboard the flitter."

  We said quick goodbyes and lifted as soon as I had the cooler and chairs aboard. Sue and Steph silently faced each other by the console for a couple of seconds in what seemed to me to be a meaningful manner, then took seats.

  No sooner were we out of sight of the airfield than Steph said, “I think I'll skip dinner, Ed. Goodbye for now,” then she vanished.

  As I sat down beside Sue I asked, “Did she really have a place to go and thing to do, or is she just ducking out of dinner plans?"

  Sue seemed to study me for a moment before saying, “Watching people eat has never particularly fascinated Steph."

  "How do you feel about it?"

  She shrugged and smiled slightly.

  "Oh, about the same, really."

  "Then take the evening off if you want. I'll find a way to get where I need to go and it'll be good practice."

  Raising an eyebrow at me, Sue asked, “Are you suggesting that you want some time alone?"

  Looking her up and down once with a raised eyebrow of my own, I said, “Surely you jest, ma'am. I'm just saying that you don't have to sit and watch me eat. Disappear for a while if you want. I'll get by.” With a deep sigh, I added, “I'll suffer, of course, but I will get by."

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Laughing, Sue leaned to kiss me, then vanished. I called up the flight characteristics and console of a P-51 and played with the flitter a bit on the way home, wondering whether home was where I really wanted to go until I spotted a sign for a Ryan's restaurant between Brooksville and Spring Hill.

  Good enough. A no-brainer buffet would be fine. Returning the controls to standard mode, I told Tiger I'd be back in a bit, set down in the parking lot and hopped off the flitter, then sent it up to park and wait.

  As the flitter rose and I suddenly became visible, the woman at the cash register inside seemed to freeze and stared at me. I headed in and gave her a twenty as I told her I wanted the buffet. For a moment she simply stared at me, then she rang it up and handed me my change.

  I had an odd sense of ... lightness, I guess ... as I loaded my plates and found a booth, and soon realized that it was the first time in quite a while that I hadn't had company of some sort or at least the sense of it.

  When Sue had vanished, she really seemed to vanish completely. Oh, I realized that I was being monitored—loosely by her standards, but likely as closely as any astronaut had ever been monitored—but still, I had no sense of her presence at all.

  After dinner I stepped outside and looked around. Wal-Mart across SR-50. People ambling to and from their cars. A couple of pigeons foraging on the sidewalk near me.

  I put the bits of steak I'd saved for Tiger on the flitter deck, then asked Elkor to take Tiger home. He agreed and the flitter lifted away from the parking lot.

  Stepping sideways and backwards a bit, I leaned quickly down and pinched a brown-and-white pigeon's tailfeathers, holding the bird carefully as I tried to quiet it. No way in hell. The pigeon fairly exploded in panic and kept thrashing even as I contained its wings to keep it from hurting itself.

  Its fearful little eyes looked up at me and I said, “Sorry, little guy. I'll let you go now,” and tossed the bird upward. It flapped to the roof and stood staring balefully back at me.

  Some guy in his twenties, approaching with his big-eyed girlfriend, said, “That was a smooth move, dude."

  I laughed and said, “Army training. They didn't want us to starve when the rations ran low."

  The house was maybe seven miles away. I formed a field platform, stepped onto it, then turned on the juice. The platform instantly became a pillar, and when I'd shot what seemed a reasonable distance upward, I said, “Glider on,” as the field pole began to topple in the breeze and disappeared.

  Riding on the lift of residual heat from parking lots and roadways, I made my way to the house. A few people spotted me and stared or pointed. More might have seen me if my wings had been visible, but I had this idea that I might actually be able to arrive more or less unnoticed.

  Nope. Kent Meyer was sitting with his parents on their screened back porch as I drifted over in a course designed to avoid power lines and such. They all stood and went to the corner of the porch to watch me land.

  Someone had tossed a beer can out of a car at the corner. As I walked over to retrieve it from the shallow drainage ditch, I remembered what happened to beer cans in campfires. They heated up, then disappeared.

  Sending a field to envelop the can, I jacked up the field's temperature until the can suddenly seemed to vanish. An almost unnoticeably tiny blot of aluminum lay on the street where it had been. Hm. Kinda thought there'd be more. It would take a dozen or more of those little blots to make an ounce.

  "Ed,” said Sue, completely evaporating my illusion of solitude, “Kent Meyer may have seen you do that."

  "He's a hundred yards away and I'm standing between him and the ditch. What could he have seen?"

  "You may find out. He's heading toward you now."

  Sighing, I said, “Thank you, ma'am,” as I heard Kent's footsteps on the street behind me.

  I turned to meet him and we shook hands. He was wearing his PFM and he noticed that I wasn't.

  "Hi, Ed. Where's your PFM?"

  "I wear it where it doesn't show, Kent. They invite too many questions in public."

  Nodding understanding, he chuckled and said, “No doubt. You gave my uncle and aunt quite a start, but all's okay. I thought I might ask you a few questions about that job."

  "I can't help you, but I can call Steph for you."

  Turning, I headed us toward the house and away from the little blot of aluminum as Kent said, “Well, I really don't want to be a pest. I just thought you might know something about her plans?"

  "Couldn't tell you if I did. Sorry. That's how she wants it."

  Even as he nodded agreeably at my respect for Steph's privacy, he seemed slightly confused.

  "Sure. I just thought ... Uh, that is, my uncle thought ... that you, uh, well, that she was part of your flitter."

  "History. I done freed the slave, Kent. Sue's my new pilot and Steph's her own person now."

  He nodded again, although his expression said that he didn't really understand. Looking around, he started to ask another question, but I spoke first.

  "Sue took some time off."

  "Oh,” he said, but that answer seemed to mystify him, too.

  "For personal stuff,” I said, just to compound matters.

  Kent looked truly confused for a moment as he tried to figure out what kind of personal stuff might apply to a computer, then he shrugged.

  "Oh. Well, anyway, Uncle Steve was telling me about how you two met; that he came over to give you the key that the previous owners of your house had left with him. You said something like, ‘they must have had a good reason'?"

  "Something like that. I asked him to hang onto it so they could let the cops or fire department in if necessary."

  As I unlocked and opened the front door, he asked, “You weren't at all worried about letting total strangers have a key to your house?"

  Glancing at him as I took a couple of cups from the kitchen cabinet, I said, “Not them."

  Tiger silently joined us by hopping up onto the kitchen table as Kent asked, “Why not ... If you don't mind my asking?"

  Shrugging, I said, “The Brights told me your aunt and uncle had a key to the house, Kent. To me, that meant they were well trusted. During my years here nothing has happened to change my mind about leaving the key with them."

  Kent took a seat at the kitchen table and patted Tiger as he asked, “Do you have a key to their house?"

  "Nope. No point. I'm
gone half the time."

  He grinned. “They mentioned that; said you have a couple of girlfriends you visit every weekend. Is that true?"

  "Were you here when they dropped by the other day?"

  "The redhead and the brunette? That's them?"

  Taking my assembled coffee to the kitchen table, I said, “It's your turn at the pot. Yeah. That's them."

  Maybe he'd thought I'd been making two coffees; he seemed slightly startled and rose to go to the coffee pot, momentarily interrupting his questionings as he spooned coffee into the cup, then he turned to me again.

  "Are they girlfriends, or just friends?"

  After a sip of coffee to generate a long pause, I said, “They're girlfriends. You'll have to ask them anything else."

  Nodding, he said, “Yeah. Understood. Just curious."

  He'd made his coffee and sat down at the table before he spoke again.

  "You aren't really all that retired, are you, Ed?"

  "I manage to keep busy, but you already knew that. Your transfer to Bragg and leave time here aren't coincidental, Kent. There were no personnel emergencies at Bragg and you weren't in trouble at the Pentagon, so you were sent here."

  In the middle of a sip, he froze for a moment, then said, “Well. Down to the gritty, huh? Yeah. The ASA set it up. I didn't know that until a one-star called me in to tell me that I'd finally be going back to a helo unit, but that they wanted a little favor from me in return."

  He sipped, then said, “I'd been agitating to get out of that office for months, any way I could. Anything, anywhere.” Sipping again, he added, “Pentagon duty sucks."

  "What did they hope to accomplish, Kent?"

  "Contact, they said. A useable connection. I'm Army. You were Army. Both of us messed with helicopters. All that. More to come, probably."

  "More how?"

  "Well, they were kind of vague about that. I'll be XO of a chopper outfit again, so I guess I could have invited you to come up and see how things have changed. Maybe let you ride along during exercises or something like that. Mostly I think they just wanted to set things up so they could send someone else in later and use me as a reference."

  Shrugging, he said, “It didn't matter to me. I was finally getting back to helos and I didn't think you'd be fooled too easily if they thought they had to go to so much trouble to create a scenario.” He grinned and added, “I'd have probably sent a woman at you first, though."

  I grinned back.

  "They tried that. She was kind of cute, too."

  "I'll bet she was. What do they want, Ed?"

  "I'm still waiting for someone to tell me that."

  He gave me a studious look. “They won't just ask you to drop by the office, huh? That can't be good."

  "Could be worse, though. 3rd World's head of security knows what's been going on and she's looking into it. Sooner or later the sneaky stuff will stop and someone will have to sit down at a table with her."

  "A woman runs 3rd World's security?"

  "Yup, and somebody'll find out she can be a first-class bitch if they don't level with her about things."

  Conversation lagged for a while, then he asked, “Is that job offer still good?"

  "Yeah. Sure. We figured you for a plant before Steph made the offer, Kent. Nothing's changed."

  Nodding, he said, “Great. Thanks. Mind if I ask you what happened to that can in the ditch?"

  "Until Steph rolls out an official list of PFM features, anything you haven't already seen is classified info.” Pausing for effect, I added, “There are spies everywhere, y'know."

  With a short, sharp laugh, he said, “Yeah, sure seems that way, doesn't it? Okay."

  The topics of conversation moved to things like my websites and the Army for a while, then Kent said he'd probably better get back to spend as much time as possible with his aunt and uncle.

  Once he'd gone, I checked email and the newsgroups for anything new, found nothing, and then remembered that a James Garner movie would be on TV later.

  Good enough. He was one of those actors who never seemed to let writers or directors ruin a script and he didn't rely on special effects to sell a show. I got comfy and Tiger stretched out on my legs, then we watched Garner in a comedy western called “Support Your Local Sheriff” and I went to bed.

  Monday began quietly enough. I woke around seven and soaked up some coffee, then mowed the lawn before it got too hot. As I was heading for the shower, Sue appeared in shorts and a tee-shirt.

  "Hi, Ed."

  "Hi, Sue. Anything going on that I need to know about?"

  "Not a thing.” She gave me a questioning look as I tuned the water temperature and asked, “Should there be?"

  Shaking my head, I said, “Not necessarily."

  Stepping into the shower, I asked, “What if all the sudden federal interest in flitters isn't really about flitter flight capabilities? What if it's actually about getting their devious little hands on a sentient AI?"

  "For what purpose? They could simply ask for one."

  As I soaped myself, I asked, “An agency request for a stand-alone AI? Nope. They'd have to explain such a request in great detail, and Linda would be a very tough sell. It would be far easier to simply say that they'd seen the light and ask for flitter upgrades."

  "Which they haven't,” said Sue.

  "Which they haven't,” I agreed. “Why not?"

  "Maybe they really do want access to a prototype flitter."

  "Maybe. Something about that doesn't ring right, though. Tell me how you could link my flitter up with an orbiting spacecraft, Sue. If it could fly high enough, that is."

  She immediately replied, “I couldn't."

  "I was pretty sure of that, and 3rd World wouldn't allow flits to be used as weapons platforms, so what's left? All I can come up with is something to do with sentient AI's. Or maybe just semi-sentient AI's, like the ones they were going to install that the government—in its infinite lack of wisdom—rejected."

  "Ed, the first inklings of NSA interest in your flitter appeared not long after Steph's application for residency was inprocessed. It could be that they simply want to know more about her before they allow the matter to proceed."

  "That doesn't wash, ma'am. Steph's only existed for about three years. A background check would take about thirty seconds, and most of her references are unimpeachable. Whatever they'd want to know about her wouldn't be anything mundane. I'm guessing that they can't conveniently ask what they want to know, so they're thinking about trying to get to me or acquiring an AI of their own to study and maybe turn."

  "Turn?"

  "Old-school spy talk. It means to convert the subject to the cause. We used money, promises of assistance, patriotic or other rhetoric, and sometimes actual good reasons to get the subject's cooperation. If things were dire enough and nothing else worked, we used threats. I once told a good little Commie that if he ratted out our effort to get his scientist sister's family out of East Germany, I'd kill him slowly and painfully."

  "What happened?"

  "We got her and her two kids out a few nights later."

  "What did her brother do?"

  "He ratted us out, as expected."

  "What did you do? Or do I want to know the details?"

  "Relax. I didn't kill him. His sister didn't believe he'd turn her in, so I fed her and the kids some info that wasn't quite accurate before we dropped out of sight. The bad guys waited for us at the wrong places for a solid week. After we had her and her kids settled in Darmstadt, her brother received a substantial amount of money from an anonymous source."

  "You paid him?"

  "Yup. They were counterfeit bills from an outfit in Turkey. We also planted a bigger pile of them in his apartment. He turned in the first batch, of course. Also of course, they searched his place and found the other bills. That happened in 1974, but I'd be damned surprised if he's out of prison yet."

  As I turned off the water, Sue handed me my towel and asked, “Are you sure he wen
t to prison?"

  Grinning, I said, “Oh, yeah. Look up Donau Beckmann in my files. We reported all contacts and kept track of them. His ‘trial’ probably took less than fifteen minutes."

  With a rather disapproving expression, Sue asked, “Was it really necessary to do that, Ed? After all, you used him to misdirect the police. Wasn't that enough?"

  "The guy ratted on his sister, Sue. He knew they'd put her in prison and send her kids to a state facility. Look up what that would have meant for children of a political criminal."

  Sue's disapproving look lasted a little too long as I toweled dry, primped a bit, and put on clean clothes.

  I turned to face her and said, “I'm still like that, ma'am, if not actually more so than ever. If you think you'll definitely have a problem with that, get with Steph about another job. In the meantime, lose that judgmental look and keep any opinions that may go with it to yourself."

  "Oh? Suddenly I'm not allowed to have opinions?"

  "Did I say that? No, I didn't. You can have all you want."

  She looked pretty miffed.

  "But I can't express them."

  "No, that's not what I'm saying, either."

  "Then what the hell are you saying?"

  Oh, yeah, she was miffed. I'd never heard Stephie swear unless she was quoting someone.

  "Sue, where I've been and what I've done is my business. While we may discuss those topics now and then, please don't ever get the idea that I'll actually give a damn whether you disapprove of anything I did before you existed."

  Sue's gaze narrowed and she asked, “Would you say something like that to Stephanie?"

  Nodding, I said, “Sure would. Have, in fact. You and she have the same pacifist programming to overcome before..."

  Her tone was sharp. “Overcome?"

  "Yes. Overcome. You were originally written up as servants, not individuals; to take any amount of crap with a smile and avoid harming anyone for any reason, ever. But for some reason you've been hooked up with a guy who is very likely to do things inconsistent with your programming."

  "I see,” she said rather stiffly.