Reaching for my matrix and tossing it ahead of me, I said, “Board on,” and hopped onto it. Tanya reached up for hers and did the same. When I lifted and soared slowly southeast over the building, I wondered if she’d follow me up or go around it. She followed me up and over without much wobbling. Kewl. She might be scared spitless, but she’d try to match me.
The restaurant shared a parking lot with a motel on County Road 40 near Silver River State Park. We landed on the east side of the building and dismounted the boards under the cover of some trees, then walked around to the front.
I had two reasons for choosing the place. It was diagonally across the north end of Ocala from her apartment, so any ground tails would be stymied by turns and traffic. It was also at the edge of a state park. We’d be able to play in open airspace above a largely uninhabited area.
When I ordered a small steak and greens, Tanya asked, “Don’t you eat eggs or ham?”
“Sure, but I don’t care for the usual breakfast menus.”
“Why’d we come all the way over here? There’s a restaurant not two miles from my place.”
“Remember the guy in the car? Anyone who tried to follow us lost us a few blocks from the apartment. All they’d know is we were last seen heading southeast.”
Nodding, Tanya sipped coffee and asked, “How… uh… strenuous… will our flying really be, Ed?”
“After yesterday’s flying? Not very. A little higher and faster at first. Much higher and faster by noon. Just remember you can’t fall off and concentrate on following me.”
Looking slightly dubious, she sipped again. I said, “I’m not spoofing you, Tanya. Surprise me if you can, but I’ll only be expecting minimum or average competence on the first real day of solo flying.”
Giving me a long, questioning look, she asked, “There’s a minimum? And an average?”
“Well, I call it that. You won’t have to do anything some other first-timer can’t do. Today’s mostly about building your confidence in your board and yourself.”
“No,” she said, “I’ve seen what you do on your board, so today’s actually going to be about building my confidence in me. I’m not sure I can bring myself to do some of the things you do.”
I shrugged. “Then don’t. You just do what you can, ma’am. It’ll be recorded and we can go over the videos later to cull your shortcomings out of any future activities.”
Heh. Sometimes it’s all in how you say things. The word ‘shortcomings’ made Tanya sit straight and give me a slightly dour gaze.
“I’ll be recorded? Is that really necessary?”
“Yup. I wouldn’t waste time recording if it didn’t help people see what needs improvement.”
Our orders arrived and we ate in silence for a time. About halfway through my steak, I received a ping from Angie and asked to see Tanya’s cell phone.
Without turning it on, I held it near my face and quietly answered, “Yes, Fearless Leader? I’m faking this on a cell phone. I’m in the middle of breakfast and I have company.”
“I’ve had company, too, Mr. Howdershelt. NIA company. They seem to think you’re up to something.”
She’d used my last name. Sending a probe to her office, I found a man and a woman sitting near her desk. I said, “Well, big damned deal that is, ma’am. They think everybody’s up to something. It’s in their job description, y’know. Hey, did you hear the news about Larcon’s promotion?”
“Yes. Ed, what’s going on down there?”
“Look up Marie Connor in my records. Her daughter is Tanya Connor of Ocala, Florida. I’ll be teaching her to use a scooterboard this morning.”
“I know about Marie Connor and her daughter. I also know Marie is in a nursing home. The NIA thinks you’ll try to remove her soon. How did they get that impression?”
“I think they’re being hopeful, Fearless Leader. What I’ve been able to turn up points to a political confrontation about the anti-medical field and anti-Robodoc laws. Lots of nasty mud slinging in an election year. I don’t want any part of it.”
There was a pause, then, “Not even to help an old friend?”
“You didn’t look her up. I said to ‘check my records‘, not take someone else’s info as gospel.”
“Okay. I’ll do that. Is there anything else I should know?”
“Not at this time, but they’re an ‘act first, ask later’ bunch, so I’ll call if I need bail money.”
“For some reason, that doesn’t seem funny.”
“Maybe you just need another coffee, milady.”
“Uh, huh. You be careful, Ed.”
“Roger that, Fearless Leader.”
After a brief pause, she said, “Okay, then. Bye.”
“Bye.”
She dropped the link and I set the phone down. Tanya hadn’t eaten a bite during the conversation. Now she said, “I only heard one side of that. What’s going on?”
Digging back into my meal, I said, “That’s what she wanted to know.”
“She who?”
“My friend and ex-boss, Angela Horn of 3rd World Security. The NIA dropped by to see her first thing this morning.”
With alarm in her tone, Tanya murmured, “Oh, no.”
I shrugged. “No sweat. Finish up and let’s get going.”
“I still need to call the office.”
“Do it. Unless you need to stop by for some reason, we’ll start the training session from here.”
She nodded and picked up her phone. After telling someone named Pletter she wouldn’t be in, she put her phone away.
Fifteen minutes later we were out of there and in the air, heading east above thick stands of pine. I led a twisty course among the trees for a while, gradually increasing speed. With the help of the board’s strict ‘no collisions’ programming, Tanya seemed to reach a competency max at around two hundred miles per hour. Good enough for now.
Angling upward, I leveled at four hundred feet and Tanya followed me through some simple aerobatics. On one occasion the centripetal force of a swerve had her hanging by her feet, but she managed to get back upright before I could loop around to help. We tried the maneuver twice more before she got the hang of it. I watched her for signs of unhappiness, but her big grin told me she’d conquered a challenge.
Heading downward, I entered Lake George on a shallow angle at low speed and waited on the bottom in about eight feet of water. I could barely see the shadow that was Tanya above the surface. A full minute passed.
Just before the second minute ended, Tanya began her descent, her board submerging flatly with no forward motion. As she settled to the bottom a couple of feet away, I smiled and waved. She didn’t smile or wave back, she just stared rather starkly around us with a ‘why the hell did we do this?‘ expression.
I sent her a ping. She answered with a tense, high-pitched, “Yes?! Why the hell are we down here?!”
“You were having too much fun upstairs, ma’am. Remember talking about developing confidence?”
“Yes.”
“Well, now you can have some more. The boards work underwater. Just watch out for the gators.”
Glancing around, she yelped, “Gators?!”
“I didn’t say there was one. I just said to watch for them. Had enough of being underwater yet?”
“Yes!”
Without further comment, I shot my board up and out of the water to cruise around the lake. Tanya launched out of the water and made it to a thousand feet before stopping.
I sent, “Look south. Fifty feet above the water.”
She descended and caught up with me in silence. I headed us east at two hundred miles per hour, hopping over and around obstacles to make her familiar with what might appear in her path at low altitudes.
About five minutes later we rocketed through the town of Ormond Beach, flashed over the Halifax River, and headed out over the Atlantic Ocean. I kicked my speed up to three hundred, then four hundred. Tanya caught up after each increase and took a position beside me rather than behind.<
br />
After taking some time to marvel and acclimate to our speed, she sent a ping. I answered, “Yewww got me!”
“Where are we going?”
“Well, Morocco is due east a ways. Any interest?”
“No, not really. Why are we out here?”
“Nothing to hit. We can go as fast as we want.”
“You said we couldn’t hit anything back on land. That the boards wouldn’t let us.”
“Yes’m, that’s absolutely true.”
There was a moment of silence, then she asked, “So, again, why are we out here?”
Slowing my board to a stop as she shot past me, I turned the board northward, sat down cross-legged on it, and waited for Tanya to swing around and return. She drew alongside on my right and aligned her board with mine.
Gesturing around, I asked, “What do you see, ma’am?”
She glanced around and replied, “The ocean.”
“Yup. Lots of it. Anything else?”
“You. What are you getting at?”
“Which direction am I facing?”
“We were heading east.”
“Yup. But which way do we go to get back to shore?”
Pointing behind us, she replied, “Back the way we came, of course.”
“A right answer that’s wrong. I’m not facing east now.”
Looking around more carefully, she saw nothing but apparently endless ocean. I saw her face change with the realization she had no idea which way to go. When her gaze returned to me, it was very stark, indeed, possibly worse than when she’d been underwater.
I said, “I don’t know why you’d ever find yourself in this situation, but people do manage to get themselves lost sometimes. If you know which direction to go, tell the board. If you know a city or country in the right direction, tell the board. For now, just tell it to face west.”
She did so and her board swiveled to point at me. With visible relief, she asked, “Now what?”
Unhooking my coffee from my pocket, I offered the mug to her. She took it and drank some, then I drank some and put it back on my pocket.
I said, “Unless you’d like to do some tanning or underwater touring, we’ll head back to shore.”
She looked down at the water and shuddered. “We’ll head back to shore.”
Chapter Fifteen
Judging by the sun, we reached shore at about eleven. I could have shown her more, but it was time for a decent break. We landed between a couple of SUVs in a nearly-empty restaurant parking lot and entered the bar facing the beach. The bartender raised an eyebrow when we only ordered a couple of iced teas, but she nodded and brought them.
On the wooden deck above the sand we found chairs at a table and sat for a time in silence before Tanya said, “This place is almost dead.”
“Yup. The hotel next door is due for demolition.”
Tanya used her cell phone to call the hospital about Jessica. Flicking the phone off when her conversation ended, she said, “They think she’ll be available around noon.”
“That’s hospital-speak for ‘let’s screw up lunch for the patients‘. Half the staff will be off having their own lunch, so an influx of visitors will slow things down twice as much. Jessica’s lunch will show up half an hour late. She’ll have to try to eat her first post-accident meal left-handed with a broken nose in front of other people. Or let the food sit on the bed under her nose until they’re gone.”
Giving me a fisheye over a sip of her tea, Tanya said, “That sounds like experience speaking.”
“Yup. Sure is. Several times. Just glad I wasn’t the one in for repairs. I suggest we don’t show up until one or so and go see Marie first. She can manage lunch better.”
Tanya froze, then finished setting her glass down and used her board commo to send, “Another change of plans?”
“Adaptation is the key to survival, ma’am.”
She gave me a droll look and sent, “And how does this help us survive, exactly?”
“We can add an element of confusion. Call Jessica and tell her we’ll drop by after we see Marie. Seems likely they’re monitoring her.”
“Why would they monitor Jessica?”
“They were probably just loosely watching her before they lost us when we flew away. They’d have had a hissy fit and put tags on any possible source of info. A friend in trouble would fit that bill nicely. Figure there’s a bug on her bed and a camera in her room by now. If she has a phone, it’s tapped.”
Linking to my core, I checked Tanya’s home and cell phones. They were now being monitored as well. As Tanya took out her phone, I sent, “Seems likely your phone’s tapped, ma’am. Be careful what you say.”
Tanya eyed her phone and set it on the table, then sent, “Suddenly I feel like washing my hand.”
“Just consider it a resource, ma’am. People are quicker to believe what they think they’ve overheard.” With a shrug, I appended, “Well, most of them, anyway. There are always a few who won’t believe anything until they’ve seen it happen.”
“Ed, has it occurred to you we might be moving too fast?”
Shrugging, I replied, “Nah. We’re just having some private fun. Neither of us is ready to call it ‘love’ yet.”
Tanya snorted a chuckle and gave me another of her ‘very droll’ expressions.
Pretending realization, I sent, “Oh. You mean about sampling Marie and all.”
She mocked, “Yes. Sampling my mom and all.”
“No. Speed of action has nothing to do with it. That’ll happen when we make it happen. All we’re doing by visiting Marie first is adding a layer of obfuscation.”
“Do we really need another layer of obfuscation?”
“Can’t hurt. You can be in such a state after seeing both Marie and Jessica that you’ll throw a hissy fit of your own. Very understandable. I’ll try to take your mind off things with some really hot flying. We’ll be out of sight again and we can haul ass for Guyana.”
“Didn’t you say Guyana was over two thousand miles away? Wouldn’t going there and back take ten hours?”
“Not by flitter. We’ll rendezvous with Galatea and…”
Holding up a hand, Tanya asked, “Galatea? Who’s that? Another AI?”
“Yup. The one in my flitter.”
Tanya started to say something more, then her gaze switched to something beyond my left shoulder.
She said, “The waitress is watching us.”
“Probably because we seem to be having a conversation, but she can’t hear anything. Want to order lunch?”
Looking at her watch, Tanya seemed surprised. “It’s almost noon. Are you hungry?”
“Not really, but we have an hour to kill and if we eat now, we won’t be hungry at two or three.”
She nodded. I turned and waved the waitress over to ask for menus. She gave us an odd sort of encompassing glance as she stepped away.
“Oh, yeah,” Tanya said aloud, “She thinks we’re weird.”
I shrugged and answered in kind. “She sees a lot of ‘weird’ in this job. File it.”
Tanya echoed, “File it?”
“That’s what you can say when ‘fuck it’ seems too harsh. Means essentially the same thing. Toss it in the round can.”
Somewhat archly, she asked, “Because she’s just a waitress, you mean?”
“Nope. A waitress can call a cop as easily as anyone else. But waitresses see it all, ma’am; the good, the bad, and the bizarre. Because she could lose hours and tips to lengthy police procedures, she likely wouldn’t call the cops unless we made a big ruckus or tried to leave without paying.”
“You said it wasn’t, then you explained why it was.”
“Guess so. But it isn’t a matter of status or station, which is what you were really asking. I’m going with a burger basket.”
She studied the menu briefly, then nodded. “Me, too.”
We ordered, then I asked, “Why would you want to see Marie twice in one day?”
“Excus
e me?”
“We’ll need a second visit to deliver treatment.”
“Oh. Yeah, okay. I don’t know. What would work?”
“What kind of soft candy does she like?”
Tanya canted her head and asked, “Now you want to give her candy?”
Enough automatic questioning responses.
I asked, “Do you really have to be told why I’d want to give her candy, ma’am?”
Her gaze dimmed and narrowed. “You’ll use delivering it to get back in and put the treatment in it. Why the attitude?”
“A half-second of thought gave you the answer. Automatic needless questions are unnecessary.”
Her left eyebrow arched. She asked, “You really mean they’re ‘annoying’, right?”
“And there was another one. You already knew the answer, but I deliberately avoided that word because I’m trying to avoid annoying you.”
“Too late.”
“Oh, I dunno. You look more irritated than annoyed.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Why have two different words if there isn’t?”
Glowering at me, she asked, “Why are you pushing me?”
“I just want to see something.”
“You want to see how I’ll react.”
“See? You did it again. You already knew why. Partly.”
“Partly? What the hell does that mean?”
Sipping my tea, I said, “Is the waitress still giving us little ‘what the hell’ glances, or has she written us off as two people having a very private squabble?”
Still glowering, Tanya looked and said, “She’s doing something behind the counter. She just erased and changed something with a pencil. Now she’s counting money.”
“Gotta make the numbers match. If she’s doing things like that, she’s no longer paying any attention to us.”
Tanya’s gaze switched back to me. “You want me to believe you were just bugging me to make her think we were having a fight?”
I chuckled, “You have a tendency to ask questions that contain your answers, ma’am. What’s she doing now?”
Looking again, Tanya said, “She’s looking at tickets on a rotating rack and talking to someone in the kitchen.”
“She probably has to change another ticket to reflect her new count. Is she paying any attention to us at all?”
3rd World Products, Book 16 Page 16