Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2)

by Schroeder, Dave

  I climbed up on the raised platform, too, but at the far end away from Shepherd’s bed. Tomáso and I needed to talk face to face and the platform made that a lot easier.

  “Thanks for getting Shepherd here so quickly,” said Tomáso. “His consulate wants to keep the situation quiet, so we’ll be taking care of him here. What happened?”

  I explained where I’d found the Pâkk diplomat.

  “Why would Shepherd be poking around at a carnival?” said Tomáso.

  “And who would be able to sneak up behind him to bash his head?” I added.

  Pâkk have exceptional situational awareness.

  Then Terrhi and Spike came into the room. I could see the Shetland pony-sized girl was brimming with questions, but when she saw the medical personnel she stayed quiet and came up to join me. Spike rubbed his head against my leg but I was ready for him and didn’t topple over. That wouldn’t have been wise, since I was standing on the edge of the raised platform.

  “Will Shepherd be okay?” she said.

  I was about to answer when one of the Pâkk medical types stepped over to us.

  “Shepherd will make a complete recovery,” he said.

  “That’s good news,” I said. Tomáso agreed.

  “He’s got a concussion and few cuts where he fell,” said the Pâkk physician. “None of the bones in his skull are broken. We’ll keep him sedated for twenty-four hours and reevaluate then.”

  “Thanks,” I said to his back as he returned to his patient.

  Apparently, Pâkk have hard heads, too.

  “I have more information for you about O’Sullivan Fabrication,” said Tomáso.

  “Your dinner with Poly and her family is in ten minutes,” said my phone.

  I slapped my forehead. I was an idiot. Once I’d found Shepherd I’d completely forgotten about the dinner.

  “Can it wait until later?” I said. “Poly will want to hear your news, too.”

  “Very well,” said Tomáso, “I will try to find out more details in the interim.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m late for a very important date.”

  “Don’t keep Poly waiting,” said Tomáso.

  “Bring Poly back here, please, Uncle Jack,” said Terrhi. “Diágo won’t let me go anywhere.”

  “He’s just trying to protect you,” I said.

  “I’ve got Spike for that,” said Terrhi in her light, little girl’s voice. She rubbed Spike’s head with a few of her sub-trunks.

  The big cat pushed back against her and purred.

  “I’ll see what I can do after dinner,” I said. “But no promises.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Jack,” said Terrhi. “I know I can count on you.”

  How did kids get so good at emotional blackmail? I blame television.

  It was time to get moving. I was supposed to meet Poly and her family for dinner at seven at “the place with the pirate ship and the crocodiles.” I left the Dauushan consulate, waving to one of the Queen’s guards I remembered from the Teleport Inn, and sprinted down another arm of Ad Astra’s courtyard toward the restaurant. I made it with thirty seconds to spare. No one noticed me arrive, however.

  The restaurant’s formal name was Dante’s Down the Hatch. It was a quirky Buckhead institution that had been around since the early 1970s. Dante’s had temporarily closed way back in 2013—I think they lost their lease—but reopened ten years later. Now it was located between two upscale hotels in the Ad Astra complex and was popular with both tourists and locals.

  Dante’s was decorated to look like a town scene from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Its interior resembled an eighteenth century tropical island port, complete with a pirate ship at anchor and rambling Spanish-style buildings close to the water. The lighting was dim with gas lamps, torches and lots of candles. Archways in the buildings’ stone facades held romantic tables for two with views of the pirate ship and the artificial lagoon where it floated. The ship’s cannons would fire whenever guests had special occasions, like birthdays or anniversaries.

  The crocodiles swimming in the water near the pirate ship, hoping for treats, were one of Dante’s biggest attractions. Guests waiting for tables could buy bits of meat to feed them. Lots of folks showed up early for their reservations just to watch the crocs. Poly and her family hadn’t noticed my arrival because they were too busy tossing chunks of beef at aquatic reptiles.

  “That one’s Jerry,” I said, pointing to the largest crocodile in the water between the feeding area and the side of the pirate ship. “He was one of Dante’s original crocs. They brought him back from a sanctuary in St. Augustine after they re-opened.”

  Poly turned around, saw me, and gave me a hug and a more-where-this-is-coming-from kiss. I disengaged with a smile and leaned over the railing next to Pomy, indicating another croc.

  “That one’s Pinocchio, because he’s got the longest snout.”

  “Hi Jack,” said Pomy.

  She gave me an air peck on the cheek. Perry and Barbara were holding hands farther down the feeding station.

  “Hello, Jack,” said Barbara.

  “I’m glad you got here,” said Perry.

  “Daddy,” said Pomy, “don’t give Jack a rough time for being late.”

  “He wasn’t late, Pomegranate,” said Perry. “And I wasn’t being sarcastic. I really am glad he got here.”

  “Would you like to feed the crocodiles?” asked Poly.

  She picked up a plastic bag from the railing by the feeding area and offered it to me.

  “Sure,” I said, removing a piece of beef. I tossed it to a small crocodile with two yellow stripes down its back.

  “What’s that one’s name?” asked Poly.

  “Gucci.”

  She wagged her finger at me.

  “That’s bad.”

  “I thought you wanted me to be bad.”

  “Save that for later,” she said, “for the next two hours, please be on your best behavior.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “I wonder if he’s good at being bad?” said Pomy, without looking up from the water.

  “Shush,” said Poly.

  “Keen, party of five,” said the hostess.

  “That’s us,” said Barbara. “We always use my name when we go out to dinner. It gets us better service.”

  We all took alcohol wipes from a dispenser and cleaned our hands, then followed the hostess past the pirate ship and up a flight of stairs.

  Barbara was probably right about getting better service. Publishing the best-selling tourist guides in the galaxy did give her a certain degree of clout with restaurateurs. We were shown to a table for five in a wide arch on the second floor overlooking the ship and the lagoon. It was a great table and I wondered if restaurant owners might be interested in buying face recognition systems to alert them when any major food critics or other V.I.P.s entered their establishments. I made a mental note to tell my phone so it could remind me to follow up on it later.

  The table was rectangular, with one narrow end against a low wall below an open arch. Perry and Barbara sat across from each other, closest to the view. They were holding hands again and staring into each other’s eyes above a candle burning in a red glass bowl. I sat at the far end of the table with Poly to my right and Pomy to my left. It felt like the two ends of the table were for the kids and the adults, but I couldn’t quite tell which of us was which.

  A server arrived to give us menus and fill our water glasses. Barbara and Perry ordered white wine.

  “What’s good here?” asked Pomy.

  “Everything,” I said, “especially the fondues. But don’t order the dumplings. They’re deep fried, not pan fried.”

  “Why don’t you order for us, Jack,” said Poly. She
raised her voice. “If that’s okay with Mom and Dad?”

  She got a nod from Perry and a small positive gesture from Barbara.

  “Everyone likes cheese?”

  More nods.

  “And chocolate?”

  I got words back this time—all in the affirmative.

  “Great,” I said. “We’ll start with a traditional cheese fondue, then a hot oil fondue with meats, seafood and vegetables, then have bittersweet chocolate fondue for dessert.”

  “Could you get one of those octovacs to carry me home after dinner?” said Pomy. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk after a meal like that.”

  “You’ll manage,” I said. “Just pace yourself and don’t fill up too early.”

  Our server returned with the two glasses of white wine, baskets of sliced fresh baguettes, and ramekins filled with chilled butter. I placed our order.

  “Excellent choices, sir,” said our server.

  Poly and Pomy said they’d had a lot of fun shopping at Lenox Square Mall. They’d found two dresses for Pomy and shoes to match at Neiman Marcus. They were less formal than what she’d worn to the royal dinner and perfect for spring graduation ceremonies in Atlanta. Poly teased me that my gift of an Orishen morphic silk dress and shoes took all the fun out of shopping. She always had exactly the right thing to wear for any occasion.

  Perry and Barbara didn’t join the conversation until after the cheese fondue arrived. We all had fun trying to hold cubes of bread and apples on the ends of our fondue forks.

  “How did things go at Georgia Tech today?” Poly asked Barbara. It might have been a peace offering, not just a question.

  “Quite well,” said her mother, “and Jack set up a lunch meeting for me with the nicest woman, the CEO at a company called Morphicoture. They made your dress, dear.”

  She nodded at Poly and smiled at me.

  “Think how much less I’ll have to pack for my interstellar trips with morphic clothing,” she said.

  “I’m glad you and Ellie got along so well,” I said.

  “We really hit it off,” said Barbara, spearing a piece of apple with her fondue fork and dipping it in the gooey cheese. “But I almost forgot—there was a young Orishen looking for you at the dean’s office.”

  “A young Orishen? A larva? A nymph?” I asked.

  “I didn’t see him,” said Barbara. “I just heard your name and recognized that the voice belonged to a young Orishen.”

  “Curious,” I said.

  “You may see him tomorrow,” said Barbara. “I think he’s graduating.”

  It was fun feeding bread dipped in cheese to Poly. Barbara and Perry were feeding each other, too. I think Pomy was feeling left out, but didn’t know what to do about it. Maybe I’d introduce her to Ray Ray?

  When the hot oil fondue course came to our table I made sure to be more sociable and pulled Perry and Barbara and Pomy into conversation. Perry and I talked about the exhibits and behind the scenes artifacts at the Carlos Museum. He also bragged about how fast I’d solved Dr. Liddell-Scott’s tech problems. Pomy said she’d have to visit the museum herself next week. She said she was planning an extended visit to Atlanta to catch up on lost time with her sister.

  The bittersweet chocolate dessert fondue was amazing. It made me glad I’d forgotten to bring my backpack tool bag with me from my van, since Chit would have demanded a thimbleful and would have threatened to fall into the pot.

  We were all full and Pomy wasn’t the only one interested in help from an octovac to roll home. When we left the restaurant, Perry and Barbara said good night and walked arm in arm down the courtyard to the right. Poly looked a me, then at Pomy, then at me again. I tried to solve her dilemma.

  “May I please borrow your sister for an hour or two?” I said to Pomy. “There are things we need to talk about. I’ll have her back before eleven.”

  “Okay,” said Pomy. She put on a stern face. “But not one minute after, young man.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  All three of us laughed.

  “I’m going back inside to take another look at all the memorabilia,” said Pomy.

  “There’s a lot of it,” I said. “See you back at your hotel.”

  Poly and I walked down the courtyard to the left, which happened to be the direction of the Dauushan consulate. I told Poly what had happened at the carnival this afternoon.

  “Poor Shepherd,” she said. “Who would have done something like this?”

  “Someone who didn’t like where he was poking his snout,” I said.

  “At a carnival?”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Maybe Tomáso’s found out something more. He said he had an update on O’Sullivan Fabrication.”

  I felt a slight tremble in the ground and saw something large and pink headed my way.

  “Speak of the devil,” said Poly.

  Tomáso and Martin were coming up the walk to meet us. Neither one of them looked happy.

  “What’s wrong?” said Poly. “Did something happen to Shepherd?”

  “Shepherd’s fine,” said Tomáso. “At least he will be in a day or so. A knock on the head won’t keep him down for long.”

  “I’m the one with bad news,” said Martin. “I lost Cornell.”

  “How do you lose a grown man?” asked Poly.

  “Weren’t you holding him in a cell in the capitol basement?” I said.

  “Yes, but someone pulled the fire alarm and he got away in the confusion.”

  “Didn’t you have him guarded?”

  “Yes,” said Martin, sounding miserable, “but he was an irregular prisoner. We hadn’t formally put him in the system.”

  “Got it,” I said. “So he slipped through the cracks. No use locking the barn door after the milk is spilled.”

  Poly gave me a strange look, then spoke to Tomáso.

  “Jack says you have more information about O’Sullivan Fabrication.”

  “I do,” said Tomáso. “Thanks to a tip from an insider we found the entrance to the lower level.”

  “Was it empty?”

  “Yes,” said Tomáso, “but not clean. We found signs that the lower lab really was being used to incubate Compliant Plague nanoparticles. Scuff marks and depressions on the floor of the lower and upper warehouses also indicate ten giant robots had been stored in the facility.”

  “So Queen Sherrhi’s gambit worked. They’re going to show their hand.”

  “When she speaks at Emory’s commencement on Saturday,” said Tomáso.

  “Odds are good,” I said. “But we’ll stop them somehow.”

  “Or I will,” said Tomáso, “with the Charalindhri.”

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” I said. “By the time your asteroid melting ship’s beams hit the surface they’re not going to be precision instruments. How are you going to make sure Queen Sherrhi and Terrhi and the rest of us aren’t fried?”

  “Diágo has a way to evacuate the queen and the princess,” said Tomáso. “They won’t be there when the beam strikes.”

  “But the rest of us might be?” said Poly.

  She looked like she didn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “As a last resort,” said Tomáso.

  “It won’t come to that,” I said.

  “It better not,” said Poly.

  Martin spoke up.

  “We’ll do our best to find Cornell and recapture him.”

  “I’ll give you even money that he’ll be piloting a robot on Saturday morning,” said Poly.

  “You may be right,” said Martin.

  Tomáso knelt down on his front legs and bent his head toward Poly and me.

  “My friends,” he said. “I kno
w my desire to protect my Queen, my species, and the galaxy offends you.”

  “Not when you put it that way, big guy,” I said.

  “Nonetheless,” he said, “I beg a boon.”

  “What can we do for you?” said Poly.

  “Not for me,” said Tomáso, “for my daughter.”

  “How can we help?” I asked.

  “Could you and Poly please tell Terrhi a bedtime story?”

  How could we say no?

  Chapter 34

  “You can never learn less, you can only learn more.”

  — R. Buckminster Fuller

  Terrhi didn’t get a bedtime story. She didn’t even get two bedtime stories, she got three. I’d called Pomy and invited her to join us at Tomáso’s apartment and she came up with a very inventive tale about a strong, independent Dauushan girl named Atalanthi, three suitors, and a race with three golden apples. Atalanthi used the apples to bean her suitors, won the race, and went on to live her own life. Spike liked my tale of the trolls living under the Tenth Street Bridge and their confrontation with the Three Trisabercats Gruff, but Poly’s story was Terrhi’s favorite.

  “…then Princess Polhi saw that the gods had cursed Queen Sisyphushi to push the giant round boulder up the hill, but never get it to the top. ‘Let me help you,’ said the princess. Together they rolled the boulder up to the top and down the other side, where it knocked over the pillars of the mean gods’ temples like bowling pins. And Polhi and Sisyphushi were the best of friends until the end of their days.”

  If we made it through the weekend, I expected that Tomáso would be ordering Terrhi-sized lawn bowling equipment.

  When the bedtime stories were over, I walked Poly and Pomy back to the Star Palace. I kissed one sister, hugged the other, and headed back to my apartment. On the way, I heard the same scurrying sounds in the bushes I’d heard before. I made a mental note to borrow Spike from Terrhi so the two of us could flush out whatever small animal was making the noise. I was betting on chipmunks, since squirrels usually kept to the trees.