3rd World Products, Inc., Book 5

by Ed Howdershelt

  "We prefer to handle these matters discreetly, sir."

  "That's not going to happen. If you don't let go of me, you can expect a big scene and count on going to court."

  "You're threatening me?"

  "Why not? You're bothering me. State a good reason or go hassle someone else."

  We had a staring match for a few moments, then the guy let go of my arm and said, "Just don't give me a reason to stop you again."

  "Let's be real clear about something. You didn't have a reason to stop me this time, and now it's time to either let this whole thing go or take it to the next level."

  To bolster my view of matters, I fed him some theta waves and watched his demeanor soften as he said, "Yeah, okay. But I'll be watching."

  "That's your job."

  He ambled calmly away without even a glance at the others and made it perhaps ten paces before he stopped, looked around with a somewhat confused expression, and peered at me for some moments before heading across the promenade.

  Without a word to the people standing nearby, I entered the bookstore and headed for the magazines.

  Through my implant, Sue asked, "Were the theta waves necessary, or were you again just 'evening things out'?"

  "Yes to both. Badges bring out the worst in some people. He didn't have a case, but he had a problem with backing away from the situation. The theta waves were a kicker to make him cooperate."

  "You don't think he'd have seen the sensibility of backing away?"

  Leafing through a 'Scientific American' magazine, I replied, "No, I didn't, and why hope when you can be sure?"

  A couple of articles interested me; I bought the magazine and headed for the restaurant section of the mall.

  "Ed, may I ask why you bought that magazine when everything in it is available to you through your datapad?"

  "Where's my datapad?"

  "In your briefcase, as always."

  Chuckling, I said, "That would be my currently-invisible briefcase in the field above me, true? The one I'm not supposed to reach for in public, that is."

  "Cute. You could read it later."

  "But I have time to kill now, ma'am, and I don't know how much time that will be."

  I felt someone watching me intently as I bought a coffee and chose a table. Sitting so that I could see the main corridor of the mall, I saw the rent-a-cop in a clothing store as I opened the magazine and sipped coffee.

  He was the watcher, of course, and I had the feeling our encounter in front of the bookstore wouldn't be our last. Some twenty minutes passed before the guy appeared in the restaurant entranceway and headed toward my table in a determined fashion.

  Decisions, decisions. Let him come over and explain that I was waiting for two women -- or possibly three, if Sue was still with them -- to finish shopping? Or simply drop him with a stun and let him try to figure out and explain to others why he passed out?

  Nah. Let him come over and see what was on his mind. If he got nasty, then I'd zap him.

  When he got to my table, he said, "This mall has rules against loitering. You've been sitting here for half an hour."

  "Twenty minutes."

  "Are you waiting for someone?"

  Sipping my coffee, I said, "Yup."

  "Who?"

  "Two women. Since I seem to be your only interest today, stick around; I'll introduce you to them."

  His gaze narrowed. "Don't get smart with me. I'll run you out of here for loitering and ban you from the mall."

  Punting a chair a short distance from the table, I replied, "Get a coffee, take a break, and tell me why the hell you picked me. I never even got inside a store before you showed up, so don't give me any bullshit about suspicious activities."

  He leaned on the table and growled, "I've seen people like you before. You watch everything and everybody all the time, and that's what people do when they're up to something."

  With a chuckle, I said, "Yeah, well, that's what you're supposed to be doing, too, but here you are, pestering me while the shoplifters clean the place out at their convenience."

  Muttering, "Goddamnit, that's it!" he straightened up and shoved a chair out of the way as he came around the table.

  When he grabbed at my arm, I grabbed his hand and twisted it so that he had to go to one knee to ease the excruciating pain in his wrist.

  Putting down my coffee, I said quietly, "Enough. Go away and stay gone. If you grab at me again, I'll hurt you for real."

  He glared at me in silence. I increased the pressure on his wrist until his eyes shifted to it in alarm.

  I asked, "Well? Yes or no."

  Sue materialized within his range of vision. The guy startled so hard I had to let go to avoid snapping his wrist. He stood up quickly, rubbing his wrist and staring at Sue. With a hard look at me, Sue vanished again and the guy's eyes bugged out.

  Keying my implant, I said, "Huh-uh. Oh, no, no, no. Get yourself back here, lady."

  Reappearing, Sue met my gaze in silence, completely ignoring the mall guard's goggle-eyed amazement.

  "What the hell was that about?" I asked.

  "You were hurting him."

  "It was our business, not yours."

  She glanced at the guard and back at me, then said, "I believe he will leave you in peace now."

  "That's not an answer. Why did you interfere?"

  Carefully enunciating each word, Sue said, "It seemed the thing to do."

  "It was a private issue."

  Her left eyebrow went up. "Was it? What if he'd come back with the police?"

  "Not likely. He'd have had to explain too much, like having no good reason to hassle me in the first place and allowing things to escalate unnecessarily."

  Turning to the guard, she asked, "Do you concur with his opinion?"

  Startled again by being addressed by her, the guard responded, "Uh... Well, yeah, I think so. Who..? What..? Uh, are you real..?"

  Ignoring his questions, Sue asked, "Would you have left peacefully prior to my appearance?"

  Glancing at me, the guard said, "Uh, well... Maybe not right away, I guess..."

  Selena and Toni hurried around the corner of the entranceway and toward my table as Sue gave me a look of smug vindication until the guard said, "But, uh, he's right, ma'am. I wouldn't have called the police."

  Sounding an awful lot like someone's mother, Sue rather piercingly asked, "Then why were you being so difficult?"

  It occurred to me that I'd heard the word 'difficult' fairly often over the last couple of hours. Standing up, I gave Sel and Toni a small wave and a grin as the guard tried to stammer a reply. I pulled a couple of chairs out, but the ladies didn't sit.

  I asked, "Are you through shopping, or did Sue call for reinforcements?"

  "Yes and no," said Selena. "We're through shopping, but Sue didn't call us."

  "Then why were you in such a hurry?"

  Toni said, "We bought ice cream," and held up a bag. "We want to get it home."

  I zapped the box inside the bag with a cold field that caused frost up to the handle straps and said, "No problem," as I picked up my magazine and sipped the last of my coffee.

  Sue said, "I'll see you all later," and vanished again as I took the bags from Sel and Toni. The guard continued to stare at the space that had held Sue and passed his hand through it. The ladies and I headed for the mall's front doors.

  The guard and one of the employees from the fried chicken place followed us to the doors and outside. When we stepped into the flitter's field and vanished, the fried chicken woman muttered, "Oh, my God!" in a rather shrill whisper.

  Chapter Three

  If Toni's cell phone hadn't rung on Sunday night, we'd have stayed at Selena's until Monday morning, but someone named Steve told Toni that she'd been switched to the morning shift due to someone else's car accident.

  Around one in the morning we all kissed goodbye and I took Toni home to Inverness, then headed back to Spring Hill. Tiger seemed a bit confused -- as usual -- when I came h
ome alone. He eyed me from the kitchen counter as I freshened my coffee.

  "Yes?" I asked. "You have a question?"

  The odd combination of words and cat vocals asked, "Why do your females not come home with you?"

  I'd tried to tell him before that the ladies had lives of their own beyond my gratifications, but Tiger just didn't seem able to grasp that concept. I decided to pass the buck this time.

  "Why don't you ask my females that question the next time you see them? And don't give me any 'pack protocol' stuff. You know it's all right to talk to them about anything."

  One of his ears flattened and his gaze narrowed as his PFM collar translated my words. For another long moment he simply looked at me, then he turned and sat gazing out the kitchen window into the night.

  Calling the flitter back down through my implant, I waited a few beats and asked, "Hey, Tiger. You wanna go flying?"

  He glanced back at me momentarily and said, "Yes."

  "You got it."

  Once aboard the flitter, I keyed my implant and said for Tiger's benefit, "Sue, Tiger's driving."

  "Okay," she replied, and a four-place touch pad appeared above the dash. Tiger eagerly hopped onto the pad and placed his paws on the glowing dots, then began leaning slightly from side to side. The flitter followed his inclinations and the pressures of his paws as we shot across the sky, swerving back and forth.

  "We go up now!" said Tiger, and the flitter seemed to launch itself at the moon when he hunkered as if to leap.

  After many minutes of looping and whirling several miles above the Gulf of Mexico, Tiger saw moving lights far below and aimed us at them. We were doing around mach two at the beginning of our dive, but Sue brought us down to just under the speed of sound before we flashed above a cruise ship.

  The thunder of our sonic boom preceded us. Some people seemed frozen as they stared upward; others scrambled for cover or ran along the deck. Tiger's tail switched back and forth in predatory glee as he emitted an excited chittering sound, hopped off the pad, and ran to the rear of the deck to keep the brightly-lit ship in sight as it receded behind us.

  I brought back the P-51 controls and set course for home at mach three. Tiger sauntered proudly back to the console and hopped onto a seat, then up to his usual post on the dash.

  "Much fun," he said, then faced forward and sat down.

  Sue appeared in the seat I'd vacated and grinned at me as I eyed her marvelous jeans-cutoff-clad legs.

  I let my gaze travel up to her face as I said, "Stephanie would have had something to say about buzzing that boat."

  Grinning at me, Sue innocently asked, "Really?"

  "Yup. You know she gave me a hard time about buzzing a submarine a few months back."

  Still grinning, Sue said, "I'm not Stephanie. Why do you insist on using archaic P-51 controls?"

  Treadling the field generated 'rudder pedals' to make the stern switch back and forth slightly, I said, "I like 'em better than the F-18 controls. They feel better."

  Shaking her head and rolling her eyes, Sue said, "At our present speed, controls for an antique propellor-driven aircraft are hardly a realistic emulation, Ed."

  Grinning, I replied, "Well, hell, lady; F-18 controls wouldn't be that much more realistic, either, would they?"

  "They'd be more realistic than those."

  "In your opinion, you mean?"

  Rather flatly, she said, "In fact, not merely opinion."

  Rolling us twice and snapping the flitter back upright, I said, "Maybe so, ma'am, but I'm driving and I like these."

  Gawd, she looked a lot like Margaux Hemingway, even with her minor alterations. A slightly different face, a height of six feet, and the athletic build of a swimmer only made Sue's field manifestation a superior version of Margaux.

  "Damn, but you're downright gorgeous, milady."

  Feigning humility, she demurely said, "Oh, thank you, sir."

  "So what have you been up to all weekend? Other than palling around with the ladies and me, that is."

  "Stephanie and I felt that the first PFM factory might be hindered by pending legislation, so we created another one in an out-of-the-way place."

  "In only a weekend? Wow. You ladies are quick. Since all the land on Earth has been claimed by somedamnbody or other, where'd you put it? Wait! Lemme guess. Antarctica, where a bunch of the land claims overlap?"

  Both eyebrows raised, Sue starkly blinked at me in an expression of surprise she'd apparently learned from Toni.

  "You mean I got it the first guess?" I asked, "Kewl."

  Sue didn't ask -- as a human might have -- if I'd really been guessing, but I figured she probably asked Steph and Elkor whether I'd spoken with them, if only on general principles. Sue didn't like having to wonder about anything.

  I felt another presence pop into being behind me and said, "Hi, Steph," even as another presence manifested on the dash beside Tiger. "Hi, Elkor."

  Tiger immediately and excitedly began regaling Elkor in catspeak about having buzzed the cruise ship as Steph took a seat on my left.

  Steph said, "We first considered locating the new factory in northern Canada, but that region has lately attracted quite a few mineral seekers."

  "Oil, gold, or kimberlite?" I asked.

  "Some gold and oil, but according to the latest survey records, mostly kimberlite."

  Shrugging, I said, "People can get kind of excited about diamonds. Too bad they can't do more of their looking underwater, like at river mouths. I'll bet tons of diamonds have washed down to the oceans."

  "You'd win that bet," said Steph, in a tone that left no doubt in my mind that she'd already done some searching there, likely with automated drones.

  I turned the flitter over to Sue as we neared the house. The P-51 controls vanished and we settled toward my driveway in about the same manner a hailstone falls from the sky.

  A hundred yards above the ground Sue slowed us to a relative crawl and manifested a field that displayed a bird in a nest eyeing us warily. Tiger's tail twitched intently.

  "She's in your oak tree," said Sue. "I don't want to startle her more than necessary."

  The bird stayed put as we silently landed. Sue dissolved the display field, I gathered up Tiger, and we all headed for the front door through the house's perimeter field.

  It hadn't escaped my notice that all three of the artificial entities in my life had gathered to accompany me back to the house at almost two in the morning, but I decided to let one of them bring up whatever subject had caused the congregation.

  Rinsing my travel mug in the sink, I began to make a fresh coffee. Chairs moved behind me and I glanced back to see Stephanie and Susanne sitting at the table. Elkor -- in his usual cat persona -- was sitting on the table.

  When my coffee was ready, I joined them at the table, sipping in silence as we exchanged quiet gazes.

  Stephanie broke the quiet with, "Ed, we think Linda may soon ask you to do something that would ultimately violate our moral protocols. If you accept the task, we may be unable to support your efforts."

  I glanced at each of them once, then met Steph's gaze and said, "Explain, please."

  "You may be asked to attempt to retrieve some people who were kidnapped yesterday."

  'Attempt to retrieve,' she'd said. Hm.

  "Kidnapped where?"

  "Iran. We've run numerous rescue simulations and people are killed in every scenario which included you."

  "'Numerous', huh? Gee, you used to be so precise, Steph." I sipped my coffee and asked, "Are you saying that you wouldn't want to participate directly, or that you'd disable my implants to prevent me from participating in the mission?"

  "They aren't calling it a mission. As things stand, it would be an unofficial request for assistance."

  After a pause, I snorted a laugh and quietly said, "Thanks for the clarification, but I'll call it a mission, anyway. I asked if you'd disable my implants, Steph."

  "That would depend on how you might use them."
r />   "Well, no, it actually depends on whether you intend to dictate how they're used."

  Elkor said, "Ed, our technology is not intended for killing and destruction. In all of the simulations, you were eventually required to use your implants in a violent manner to survive and succeed."

  "It's Amaran technology, Elkor, and you didn't lend me my comm and field implants. You gave them to me with no strings mentioned at the time."

  "Strings?"

  "Conditions. Clauses."

  Steph said, "Please remember that you were once cautioned that your implants could be taken from you."

  Nodding, I said, "Yup. By Linda herself, but don't think for even a minute that she was worried about anything but preventing situations that could involve or compromise 3rd World, like when I froze that guy's hand at the arena. If I'd used a gun on him instead, she'd have patted me on the back and bought me a dinner for zapping one of the bad guys."

  Looking around the table, I said, "Okay. Here it is, people; I'm fifty-four, not thirty-four. If not for my implants, Linda wouldn't hand me such a mission and you all know it, so let's cut to the chase. You're running simulations, so you already know the mission specs. How about telling me about it?"

  None of the simulated people at the table spoke aloud, and I heard nothing via my implant, but I had no doubt that Elkor polled the others before he said, "Linda would undoubtedly prefer that she or her designated..."

  Raising a hand, I said, "Okay. No problem. Elkor, I really do think I understand the AI no-kill point of view, but you have to know by now that I don't completely agree with it. There are people in this world without whom the world would be a much safer, friendlier place for billions of other people."

  For some moments there was silence at the table, then Elkor said, "Linda said she would call you tomorrow. Tiger wanted to speak with me about something, so I'll excuse myself now."

  "Okay. Goodnight, Elkor."

  "Goodnight, Ed."

  He disappeared and reappeared on the sofa chair beside Tiger, where a discussion in cat began immediately.

  Steph 'sighed', then said, "It's getting late. Linda will likely call you early, so I'll let you get some sleep."

  Nodding, I said, "Okay. G'night to you, too, milady."