Titanium Texicans

by Alan Black

  The stores got bigger with fewer windows. They retreated away from the street across vast parking lots amid drive up restaurants. Tasso would have to ask Uncle Bruce about drive up meals. Even if you bought your food from a person at a window, where would you cook it? He knew bigger aircraft had kitchens and sleeping quarters, but most of the flitters and aircraft in the area were no bigger than his little red Matador.

  The closer to the spaceport he got, the more rundown the buildings became. Inns for travelers mixed with businesses that didn’t seem to advertise any more than a business name on a small sign, but people were coming and going as if they knew what was in the store. The businesses began to crowd the road again.

  Tasso was passing one business as a group of people was entering. He couldn’t see any signs or advertising explaining what the business offered, just a sign with a name. From what he could see and hear, there appeared to be a party going on inside. It looked like a picnic. People were drinking, with glasses clinking, lots of laughter with music, singing, and dancing. He thought city folk were very strange to have a picnic inside on such a fine day.

  There hadn’t been much music, singing, and dancing going on in their valley after Grandma died. Grandpa hadn’t been much of a singer, and since Landing Day celebrations still made Tasso angry, they dispensed with such things altogether.

  Tasso was getting angry just hearing the party. He really wished one of the Lamont boys had shown up last night instead of the elder Lamonts. He would’ve thrashed one or all three, right then. He decided he was going to look them up some day and finish the job he’d started when he was ten. Still, having hurt those two Bog-Irish boys so quickly gave him pause. Did he really want to hurt the Lamonts that badly? Today, he walked faster to put the music behind him.

  The spaceport loomed ahead. He was disappointed to see a high concrete wall surrounding the whole thing. The huge barrier was as high as the canyon walls surrounding his little valley. He couldn’t see a spaceship even if one sat in the port. He walked on.

  He noticed tall buildings in the distance. The GPS was directing him straight towards those buildings. He walked faster. He was anxious to see the tall buildings up close. The surrounding city sights seemed to be the exact reverse order of what he passed on his way toward the spaceport. Tasso had seen it once and there was very little new to interest him.

  As he walked, he wondered if businesses ringing the spaceport were like the ironwood trees and high canyon walls ringing his valley in that the ironwood trees fed the chiamra and helped it grow. He wondered if the surrounding town fed the spaceport and helped it grow or if the relationship was the other way around.

  He walked through huge canyons of towering glass and steel. He knew he was getting close. He couldn’t imagine Uncle Bruce living in such a place. It didn’t look like a place people could move about and breathe. There wasn’t any space between the buildings to plant gardens. There were some small open spaces, but all anyone grew in them were small patches of grass. Tasso shook his head. He knew about grass. He had to agree with Grandpa that it didn’t make sense to grow a crop just to cut it down. Grass was okay if you were raising domesticated herbivores, there weren’t any animals grazing in these small patches, and even the people walking through the small open spaces avoided walking on the grass.

  The GPS beeped. He pulled it out of his pocket. The little display said he’d arrived at his destination. It must be where Uncle Bruce lived or worked. He’d thought the directions were to his uncle’s home. Maybe the man expected him to show up at his workplace. The huge building took up the whole block and towered so high he had to crane his neck backwards to see the top floor.

  Standing on a street corner wasn’t getting him where he needed to go. He checked the time on the GPS. He’d beaten his own estimate by half an hour. Still, he was sure Uncle Bruce had expected him long ago. He realized he should have called when the flitter broke. Since he’d used the parts of the holo-vision set to repair the flitter, the point was moot.

  Inside the door, he found a sign with lists of who was where. Readily, he spotted a listing for the place his uncle worked for, the Saronno Produce Lobby Associates. They were on the eleventh floor and there were no listings for residences. Maybe Uncle Bruce and his friends had rooms where they worked.

  The address Uncle Bruce gave him said he was to go to room 211A. That was obviously on the second floor. Tasso could see why his grandfather wanted him to study manuals. Finding his way around this building would be like assembling a component machine. He was Part A. Part A went in Part B. Part B was room 211A. A diagram showed where Part B was and how to get there.

  He saw the access corridor to the elevators. He snorted. He wasn’t such a rube that he didn’t know what an elevator was. He looked around until he found the stairs. After all, he only had to go to the second floor.

  The stairs opened onto a broad entrance hall on the second floor. People were coming and going from all directions. He saw a guard standing off to one side. The man’s shirt didn’t have ‘security’ written on it like the guards at the processing facility, still Tasso decided the man had the same look about him. He smiled at the man and waved politely, but the man ignored him.

  There was a huge sign across the hallway. It said ‘information’. Additional knowledge was exactly what Tasso needed. He was halfway across the hall when lights flashed and sirens hooted. Someone jumped on him from behind and pushed him onto the hard floor. Three men kneeled on his back, shouting at him not to move, to put his hands behind his back, and give them his bag.

  Tasso couldn’t figure out how not to move and put his hands behind his back at the same time. Since he could hardly draw a breath with three men kneeling on him, he opted for not moving, even when they ripped his bag away from him.

  CHAPTER 7

  VARIOUS MEN DRAGGED TASSO from room to room, sitting him in a series of successively harder chairs. He’d long ago lost track of his bag. It’d only held a change of clothes, a toothbrush and the like, plus a few miscellaneous items from home. It didn’t hold his extra socks, he’d left them in the flitter when they somehow got enough burn holes to make them effectively useless. The pack did have Grandpa’s old shotgun in it, however the weapon didn’t seem to have much value in the city. He wondered why he’d fought those two boys to keep it. His dataport was stuck in place on his shirt where it always stayed. The men didn’t seem interested in taking it. With his hands tied behind his back, even if he wanted to access the dataport, he couldn’t. The men searched him, repeatedly going through the same pockets and patting the same parts of his body. They didn’t find his main stash of cash or his pocketknife. Secret pouches deep in his boots kept those items well hidden. The men did find a few dollars in one pocket, but they didn’t take it.

  Another man grabbed Tasso by the collar and dragged him out of a half-rusted steel folding chair to his feet. “Move it, junior,” the man growled. “I don’t have time for this kind of crap.”

  “I don’t—” Tasso started to say.

  “Shut up,” the man interrupted. “I don’t want or need to hear it, so exercise your right to remain silent. Keep up or I will gag you and drag you, got it?” The man rushed along a corridor, pulling Tasso behind him. A second man joined them. He had Tasso’s bag.

  “211A?” the first man asked.

  The second man nodded and matched their pace.

  The first man returned the nod. “Frakkin’ country rubes should get a tour guide with a leash before they’re allowed anywhere near civilized folk.”

  Tasso grinned. They were taking him to room 211A. They must have found out who his uncle was. They were taking him to where he wanted to go in the first place. From the sounds of it, they weren’t happy about it. Maybe Uncle Bruce was going to cause them trouble. Tasso realized their unhappiness might not have anything to do with the way they were treating him. Maybe they were just unhappy people. Maybe wearing shirts tight around their arm muscles cut off too much blood to their brain
s.

  The trio stepped through a doorway marked 211A. Actually, the two men stepped, Tasso was dragged more than stepped. A man at a desk pointed to an open door at the back. Tasso was hustled around desks and people working, no one looked up as they passed by. The open door led to a large office with a huge desk. Behind the desk sat an unsmiling bald man that Tasso did not recognize. Grandpa’s shotgun lay across the empty desk in front of the bald man.

  Tasso’s hands were untied. The men pushed him into a chair and threw his bag on the floor at his feet. The chair sat against a wall and was across the office from the huge desk. “Sit here and don’t move, junior.” Releasing Tasso’s collar, grabbing the back of his neck, the man squeezed hard. “Don’t so much as breathe hard or I’ll come back, got me?”

  Tasso took the hint, but refused to acknowledge the man. He even refused to wince at the pain of having his neck squeezed.

  The room was completely empty except for the desk, the man, and a few guest chairs. There weren’t any pictures on the wall, no certificates in frames, and nothing on the desk except the shotgun. Their combination bedroom and home office had plaques, awards, photos, and memorabilia almost completely covering the rock walls. His grandparents had collected a lot of those items over a lifetime.

  Tasso looked at the man. He was fat, but well dressed. He wasn’t wearing accessories: no watches, no rings, no necklaces. The man waved one finger and Tasso’s two escorts left the room. The bald man ignored Tasso. Pulling a dataport out of a desk drawer, he scanned through a few documents.

  A man rushed into the room. The bald man looking up at the other man, still ignoring Tasso, said, “I don’t like waiting, Menzies.”

  Tasso realized that the man who just rushed into the room was his uncle, Bruce Menzies. He wouldn’t have recognized him. The most recent picture he had of his uncle was over ten years old. The man hadn’t aged, but he’d changed. Tasso started to speak, but his uncle interrupted.

  “Not now, Tasso,” Bruce said without looking at him. He sat down in a chair across the desk from the bald man. “You can wait because you owe me. And, Moffatt—” he pointed a finger at the man to forestall any interruption, “this is not a time consuming or difficult task.”

  Moffatt shrugged.

  Bruce pointed at the shotgun. “There is certainly no need for a gun.”

  Moffatt shrugged again. “That happens to be your nephew’s long gun. What if you thought there was a reason? I didn’t think the shotgun would be necessary between us, even if my boys were the ones who missed him at the processing plant.” He looked at Tasso, “Speaking of that, what took you so long getting here, young Mr. Menzies?”

  Tasso said, “My flitter broke.” He didn’t know why, but he decided not to mention the cut tie rod. “It crashed on the other side of the McGrath Pass.”

  Moffatt nodded. “We have a report from your neighbors, the Lamonts, about a transponder report. You catch another ride?”

  Tasso shook his head. “No sir, I put a temporary fix on the flitter. It almost got me here. It quit out by the processing facility on the other side of the spaceport. Last I knew, the flitter was still parked out there. I can fix it as soon as I get the right tools and parts.”

  Moffatt shook his head. “Don’t worry. I will have it taken care of. You were on the processing facility floor?”

  Tasso nodded, “Yes sir. How do you know?” He remembered with satisfaction that he’d coded the door locks on the flitter and the flitter would have to be cut into small pieces to get around those codes. Since Mr. Moffat hadn’t asked about locks, he didn’t mention them.

  Moffatt shrugged. “I’ve got a security report about a boy of your description running away from some people of mine. They were looking to help you get to the city to see your uncle.”

  “Oh,” Tasso replied. “They didn’t seem all that helpful, sir. Sorry.”

  “I’ve also got a police report about a boy of your general description beating up a couple of street toughs and then running away. I can see you in the attached photos, too.” Moffatt looked back at Bruce and tapped the shotgun, “Anyway, building security bounced him in the lobby. He lit up the metal detectors like a Landing Day fireworks display. It took an hour for my boys to wrangle him free.” Moffatt pulled the power node charge from the gun and stripped the ammunition chamber out, his fat fingers moving with expert speed. Dropping the charger and chamber in a desk drawer, he tossed the shotgun across the desk to Bruce.

  Bruce caught the gun and held it out to Tasso sitting behind him without looking.

  Tasso took his grandfather’s shotgun and slipped it back into the bag. A gun was useless without its charger and without anything in the ammo chamber. He hadn’t seen any stobor in the city, so he probably wouldn’t need the gun on most days. He had spare chargers and ammo in his bag if he did need them.

  “Did you get all of the documents processed, Moffatt?” Bruce asked.

  “One information block is still blank,” Moffatt said looking at Tasso. “I need the relationship documented.”

  Bruce said, “Nephew.”

  Moffatt shrugged and said, “Okay by me, but he doesn’t look like you and you don’t list any family on the Saronno census rolls. You have time for DNA testing and results?”

  “You know I don’t,” Bruce spat back.

  Moffatt shook his head. “I can file this with photographic data and your deposition, like I said, the boy doesn’t look like you.”

  “You can push—”

  “Yes,” Moffatt interrupted. “I can push the data into the database without question. There are automated system checks that no one, and I mean no one, can get around. Give me a quick family history and we can call this done.”

  Bruce nodded. “My baby sister came to the city for schooling. She met a spacer. She got pregnant out of wedlock.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “That is the result. My parents are both dead. There are no other living relatives.”

  Moffatt frowned, “What about the biological father? Is he still in the picture?”

  Tasso started to blush and began to feel hot under the collar. These two men were coming within a syllable of a sensitive subject. Still, Bruce was his uncle and he should trust that his uncle knew what he was doing. Moffatt appeared to be a city official working to expedite Uncle Bruce’s guardianship documents. He gripped the chair arms, vowing to keep his seat and keep his mouth closed.

  Tasso expected Uncle Bruce to say his father had run off in to space.

  “The man is dead,” Bruce said

  Tasso was startled into shouting, “What? No one ever told me he was dead!”

  Bruce ignored Tasso, continuing to look at Moffatt.

  Moffatt raised an eyebrow.

  Bruce sighed. “The man was staying at the Spacer’s Rest Inn. He went missing and there was no indication he left the planet on a ship.”

  Moffatt raised both eyebrows.

  Bruce said, “There isn’t any police report because they never found his body.”

  Moffatt nodded, “Garbage in and garbage out. It works for agricultural-processing units as well as computers, doesn’t it? That’s okay by me. This whole mess makes us even.”

  Bruce snorted. “We are even right up until you get your next bonus payment.”

  Moffatt grinned, “That should be in about two days, so I don’t see our relationship needs to change.” Looking at Tasso over Bruce’s shoulder, he pointed back down at the name. “He’s named after his father? That correct?”

  “Tass was his complete first name as far as my sister knew. It could have been a nickname, she refused to say once the man disappeared. The ‘O’ is the boy’s middle initial. Document it as no middle name, just the initial.” He glanced at the document. “Yes. That’s good enough.”

  Moffat said, “The boy inherits the property according to your parent’s will.”

  “What?” Bruce bellowed. “I’m their son. That land should go to me.”

  Moffatt shrugged, “Your fath
er filed his will with the courts. It’s adjudicated and recorded. Neither of us can do anything about it. As long as the boy is on the property on his eighteenth birthd … ah, I see the need for both sets of documents, family being what it is, and all. I need your signature. Not his, just yours.”

  The two men swapped dataports for a few minutes.

  “Done?” Bruce asked.

  Moffatt nodded. “Done and done. You have sole guardianship rights over the boy and full control of the land as guardian until Tass O. Menzies reaches the majority age of eighteen. If he is absent from the land, it will revert to you, or if not you, then it will fall to the government for back taxes.” He looked at Bruce. “Good land?”

  Bruce said, “It’s unusable rough backcountry scrap infested with stobors and jack-o’-lanterns. It’s all worthless except for one fair-sized patch of land perfect for chiamra growth.”

  Moffatt grinned, “Good enough.” Then he grinned even bigger. “I’ll have a couple of my boys escort your nephew to his new home.”

  Bruce walked out of the room without looking at Tasso or glancing back.

  CHAPTER 8

  TASSO STARED at the city through the flitter window. He couldn’t see, hear, or smell the city as well as when he walked, but his escorts were driving past parts of the city he hadn’t seen before. He guessed he was wrong. Uncle Bruce must not live in the big building in the middle of the city.

  He noticed they were driving toward the spaceport. He still wanted to see a spaceship up close. He was really getting hungry, but he would be willing to skip a meal if they drove close enough so he could see a ship. “Sir?” Tasso addressed the driver.

  “Shut up, junior,” the passenger snapped back.

  Tasso decided to ignore the man and addressed the driver again. “I was wondering if we’re going by the spaceport, could we slow down and take a look? I’d like to see a spaceship.”

  The driver looked at the man sitting in the front passenger seat.