3rd World Products, Inc., Book 5

by Ed Howdershelt

  Steph snickered. Sue gave me a droll look and asked, "Why would she drop everything simply to meet us for lunch, Ed?"

  Tiger trotted into the kitchen and I tossed him a bit of the sliced turkey as I replied, "Maybe just because she can? She's the boss around there, y'know. Tiger, we're going flying and we'll be meeting Linda for lunch. Would you like to come?"

  Hopping onto the kitchen counter for another bit of lunchmeat, he looked at me and said, "Yes."

  "Ed," said Sue, "Linda's not the type to take off in the middle of the afternoon. Try again, please."

  "Okay. What did I call her, Sue?"

  "'Fearless Leader', but you often call her that."

  "Yeah, but it prefaced the invitation to put in some flight time. 'Leaving everything behind' was an invitation to come alone, and the followup of 'save a cold beer for you' -- a beer, not a couple -- confirmed it."

  Sue glanced at Steph, who nodded grinningly and said, "That's the way I understood it."

  When Sue looked at Elkor, he said, "I also understood it so."

  With a very deliberate-sounding sigh, Sue said, "In that case, I request an immediate update concerning his more arcane methods of communication."

  After packing two small coolers with our picnic lunches and some dessert snacks, we boarded the flitter. Tiger took his usual spot on the console dash with Elkor, but I noted that he cast frequent glances at the coolers.

  "Flitter," I said, "Take us up to two hundred miles and put us above St. Louis, please." Turning to Sue, I asked, "That's a little over halfway to Carrington, isn't it?"

  Nodding, she replied, "Yes."

  "Good 'nuff. We'll hang around 'till she gets there. She's probably at hangar four by now."

  "Yes, she is," said Sue. "How would you know that?"

  Shrugging, I said, "It seemed about right."

  Sue seemed to consider matters before she said, "Linda could have had the flitter meet her at the side door."

  "Nope. She'd have stopped by the front desk. She could have used the phone to log her code out, but she likes the personal touch when there's time for it."

  Saying that made me think about all the times I'd seen Linda make a minute or two for someone between offices or on the way to or from lunch; sometimes someone important and sometimes a janitor or clerk.

  A picture of her talking to someone's secretary in our old Kaiserslautern offices came to mind as clearly as if it were yesterday. The secretary was...?

  Oh, yeah. Glenda Morris. I'd noticed her superfine legs first, of course, but two days later she'd given me a fairly complete briefing on a mission almost completely from memory.

  I'd made sure she knew she'd impressed me, then made sure to mention it to people I knew would re-mention it to her later. People who work that hard and that well deserve notice.

  But most of those times I'd had no idea who Linda was talking with, partly because I only visited the offices now and then and partly because I didn't know -- and really had no need to know -- more than a few people in certain offices.

  Those few minutes Linda made or spared various people now and then represented more than mere time; they were the tiny connections that helped maintain enthusiastic cooperation and gradually add up to become loyal support.

  I'd learned about those special minutes over the years, but Linda had known about them long before I'd met her in Germany. It used to bug the hell out of me when I'd had to stand by while she apparently chatted with some clerk about stuff that was total trivia to me.

  My sense of presence tingled softly and I said, "Here she comes," and looked around below the flitter.

  A glint of silver rising quickly toward us caught my attention as Sue -- yet again -- gave me one of her 'how the hell does he do that?' looks and Steph snickered.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Linda's flitter zipped upward and stopped cold exactly even with us, then the flitter's opaque canopy disappeared to reveal Linda standing at the edge of her deck.

  "Thanks, Two," Linda said as she stepped over to our flitter.

  Flitter two responded, "You're welcome, Ms. Baines," put its field back up, and dove away toward the ground.

  "Hi, all," said Linda. "I borrowed flit two from a training session, so you'll have to give me a ride back to the office."

  "Uh-oh, an unscheduled stop," I said, "Sue, check and see if we can spare that much time this afternoon, will you?"

  Looking thoughtful, she said, "I think it's barely do-able."

  "Good deal. Don't want my boss taking a bus home."

  As Tiger greeted Linda and got a chin rub, I turned to open the coolers, but they were already open and their contents were being spread out atop a low, translucent-gray field table. Steph shrugged and smiled.

  The last of the sandwiches floated to the table as I said, "Thanks, milady," and fielded a turkey slice to Tiger.

  He sniffed it and said, "Thank you," then began eating.

  Linda peered hard at him, then turned to me to ask, "Did I really hear a cat say thanks just now?"

  "Yup. His PFM collar translates for him. If you'd hang out with me more often..."

  Interrupting me with a laugh, she said, "If I hung out with you more often, Emory would get pissed and you know it."

  Taking off her low-heeled shoes, Linda tucked her skirt and settled by the table, then reached into the drinks cooler before I could offer her anything.

  Pulling out a can of tea, she asked, "Would this meeting have anything to do with Africa?"

  "Not originally," I said as I sat down beside her. "We'd actually been talking about how widespread the knowledge of transmuting stuff might be. I'll let Sue play it back for you."

  Sue called up a field screen and replayed a console-view of our conversation to the point where I'd said, 'What can I say? That's just too damned bad. It's all they get and that's how I'm gonna play it. How about you? Got a better idea, ma'am?', then she added, "No. I don't have a better idea."

  Sipping a beer, Linda said, "You don't need one, Sue. That covers things well enough at your end and I'll stonewall them at my end. We'll fabricate some outrageous energy consumption stats, too, then I'll make them fight for them."

  Setting her beer down, she checked the contents of one of my sliced turkey sandwiches and picked it up to take a bite.

  "So that's covered," I said, "Now, what were you saying about Africa, ma'am?"

  "I told Steph you'd probably go," she said around some sandwich, "I didn't say you'd definitely go, though."

  "Gee, lady, thanks for leaving me an easy way out."

  Linda chuckled, "Think nothing of it."

  I worked my way through part of my sandwich before asking, "Do you want me to go?"

  After taking a breath and letting it out, Linda quietly said, "Ed, if I could send you, I would."

  Nodding, I answered, "If you could send me, I'd feel a lot better about going. How would you write it off?"

  Swallowing, she met my eyes as she said, "We'll call it leave time. You have a few months stacked up. We won't officially have to know where you are."

  "Uh, huh. Why would I take so much leave at once when I've never needed or wanted more than two weeks before?"

  She shrugged. "Personal matters."

  "Nope. Gotta do better than that. People would think I checked into a rehab clinic or something." Steph snickered and Linda chokingly laughed as I added, "I told Steph I'd only go if I can do my part of things my way."

  Looking at Steph, Linda asked, "And you said..?"

  "I said nothing. I didn't think I could convince him to quell violence in the vicinities of the clinics in as peaceful a manner as possible." Steph paused a beat, then added, "I was rather hoping you'd be able to reach him about that, Linda. He could go as a legally authorized visitor as long as he doesn't perform any illegal acts in the process of pacifying those regions."

  "Hoo-yeah!" I laughed, "'Pacifying the region'. Where have I heard that before?"

  Linda had actually frozen in mid-chew.
She stared at Steph for a moment before switching her gaze to me and swallowing. After another moment, she looked at Steph again.

  "Steph," she said, "As many as three out of five people in some of those areas are missing hands or feet. Nearly forty percent of all deaths in those regions are from abuse or murder. How the hell is he supposed to... 'negotiate'... with people who routinely do things like that to maintain control?"

  I sipped my coffee and said, "I don't want to go near the place until all the rhetoric's out of the way. Told her that before. Call me when all else has failed."

  Sue said flatly, "She can't."

  When we looked at her, Sue said, "Ed, if she could call you under those circumstances, why wouldn't she be able to... to do what's necessary... herself? What would be the difference? We're already at the edges of our programming restrictions simply by allowing this turn in the conversation."

  Sipping my coffee again, I looked at Linda. She pursed her lips and seemed to consider matters for a time, then nodded and worked on the rest of her sandwich.

  "Tell you what," I said, "Send a list of the places you want to put clinics to my datapad. I'll look it over, but I'm not making any promises and I won't try to be some kind of diplomat in a place where I'd be the only white target in a free-fire zone."

  Blinking at me the way Toni would have if something I'd said had shocked her, Sue grinningly asked, "Ed, are you a secret racist? Should I put a Confederate flag bumper sticker on your flitter and install a shotgun rack?"

  "Nah. Then I'd have to get a shotgun. Get real, sweetie. I'd be the only white guy for miles in ninety percent of Africa and you know it, you field-generated clown."

  Morphing her appearance to resemble a certain tall, black supermodel, Sue pretended to study me carefully.

  "Ah-ha," she said with a smug expression, "Your readings dropped instantly."

  "That's because she's a face on a stick. She looks like she just got out of a concentration camp. Try showing me a woman with some meat on her bones -- like Angela Bassett, Vanessa Williams, or Beyonce Knowles -- and see what happens."

  Linda laughed and said, "If he can rattle off their names like that, I think I already know what'll happen."

  Glancing at Linda, Sue grinningly became Angela Bassett for about five seconds -- far too short a time, I felt -- then changed to Vanessa Williams for another five seconds before Beyonce Knowles appeared.

  Her grin had become rather wry as she morphed back to her usual semi-Margaux Hemingway appearance.

  "I see," she said, then Sue spoke to the others as if announcing some great truth, "His readings would seem to indicate that extremely thin women don't appeal to him."

  Laughing again, Linda said, "No surprise here."

  "She already knew it," I said. "What just occurred is also known as giving someone a hard time for a laugh." To Sue, I added, "Thanks for the show, though. You do a great Angela Bassett and a really fine Vanessa Williams."

  Sue smilingly performed one of Selena's fake curtseys, which sparked another round of laughter. I reached up for my briefcase and brought it to my lap to retrieve my datapad, then let the case return to its parking zone above my head.

  Yup. She'd already sent the clinic location data. Poking up a map of Africa, I transposed the GPS coordinates of the clinics to it and wasn't at all surprised to see the representative dots apparently only about fifty miles apart.

  "Ambitious as hell, isn't she?" I muttered, showing the pad to Linda. Turning to Steph, I asked, "Care to prioritize these a bit for me? This looks like a ten-year plan."

  Linda took a look at the plethora of dots and softly swore.

  "It's a five-year plan," Steph replied as the dots changed to red, green, yellow, blue, and gold and a scaled chart appeared. "Our first concern will be the red locations."

  'Our first concern', she'd said. Not 'your first concern'. I noticed that all the red dots were in the worst areas of conflict and poverty imaginable; some in the Congo and some in the coastal and desert regions.

  "Oh, well," I said, "I kind of expected what I'm seeing. At least there'll be nobody in these places to give you any crap about practicing medicine without a license. I'll look all this over later."

  Turning off the datapad, I pulled my briefcase down again and put the pad back in it, then let the case disappear and picked up my second sandwich.

  With a raised eyebrow, Linda asked, "Later? What's wrong with right now?"

  "I'm still thinking about how I'd want to handle things. Sue or Steph would have to add some programming to my implants once I know how I'd want to proceed, but I have a question before we go any farther. Why not drop limited-function PFM's with instructions in each zone? Let everybody stun each other silly until the bad guys leave to find easier pickings."

  Sue said, "We've extrapolated along those lines and rejected that idea. It would be a year or more before the areas were clear of conflict. Thousands could die before then."

  Sighing, I said, "Yeah, but most of them would be baddies who find themselves flat on their backs surrounded by vengeful villagers, and I don't have a problem with that. Look, Sue, it's fucking Africa, y'know? That's how they've always run the place. There's no way to do this that won't get somebody killed. All you can really hope for is that the right people die."

  I turned to Linda and said, "And all we're going to be able to 'discuss' about any of this is how soon I'd go and how I'd go about things. Right?"

  "That's how it looks to me, too." She looked at Steph and asked, "How about it? Are you willing to give him free rein, Steph? The only answer I'll accept is 'yes'. Anything else and I won't be able to spare him for the project. It's just too dangerous to try to go about this in a half-assed fashion."

  Steph flatly replied, "You both know I can't. I'll proceed alone if necessary."

  "Linda," I said, "Do we need Steph's permission or support? Couldn't I just sort of go over there and clean things up a bit on my own?"

  With a droll look, Linda replied, "You already have a couple of hobbies, Ed. One of them involves being alive in order to work for me. I'm not thrilled with the idea of you..."

  Holding up a hand, I asked, "But would you stop me? If you happened to get word that I might be going, I mean?"

  Linda was silent for some moments before she spoke.

  "I suppose not, if I thought you'd be extremely careful."

  I sipped coffee as I sent twin one-inch diameter red and blue tendrils outward to intertwine like snakes, then weave themselves into a complex pattern around the console.

  Eyeing the tendrils' looping, weaving progress, Linda almost whispered, "Ed, what the hell are you doing?"

  Extending the red tentacle into a sinuous, curving loop that ended only a few inches from her nose, I said, "I'm practicing while I think, ma'am."

  She stared at the end of the tendril as if it were some kind of snake for a moment. When I made it retract to continue interacting with the blue tendril, Linda glanced askance at me as she munched the last of her sandwich.

  The console soon looked as if a form-fitting red and blue basket had been woven over it. I spaced the weave a bit and sent into it a bright refractive tendril that made the pattern look as if it had a thread of diamond running through it.

  "Sue," I said, "Given my current capabilities, how big an animal could I stun completely with one jolt? A rhino, maybe?"

  Shrugging, she said, "Possibly. I'd say likely, in fact."

  "That would be how many people at once?"

  "A dozen or so, easily. Perhaps fifteen. People have much lower thresholds than animals."

  Letting the console's basket-shroud vanish, I formed a grey cylinder about three inches thick around myself and said to Linda, "I know this barrier will stop or turn a 9mm pistol round because I've tested it. If I used this and my five suit at the same time, it might stop or turn a rifle round."

  "It could turn a bullet from an M16," said Steph, "But not one from an AK47."

  Linda's eyebrow arched as she added, "
And that's the most common weapon in Africa. I'd prefer you not rely too heavily on that particular field trick, Ed."

  "Just for you, I'll save it as a last ditch tactic, milady."

  Linda shook her head as she cut her second sandwich, then poked at my barrier with her table knife.

  "I'm serious," she said. "It's real cute, but it's not enough. What else you got, mister?"

  Conjuring a tendril with a glowing tip, I sent it at the knife. The tip of the tendril touched the end of her knife and almost instantly melted a quarter-inch hole through the stainless steel blade. It then thinned to a white-glowing hairlike filament and passed through the last half-inch of the blade. Linda stared in surprise as the flat bit of stainless steel fell to the deck.

  She muttered, "Well holy shit, Batman! I remember when you had a hard time of putting a hole in my gold coin. You've been working out, haven't you?"

  "Yup. That trick can cut through a rifle bolt in about two seconds or weld it shut at the edges in one second. A spot weld along the top shouldn't even set off the ammo."

  Grinning, Linda asked, "Is that guessing or gospel?"

  "Almost gospel. The cops let just about anybody watch when they cut up confiscated weapons. There were some rifles and pistols on a table, so I took the opportunity to mess with a few from a distance of about ten feet. Some bolts fell out in pieces and others wouldn't open with claw hammers."

  Linda laughed, "I'll bet that caused a small scene."

  "Yeah, but only a small one, and it didn't last long. They pulled one rifle and one pistol off the table and cut the rest."

  "Was..." she paused to think and continued, "Deputy Greer, I think? Was he there?"

  "'Detective' Greer now. Since not long after the bomb squad showed up at my house, in fact. Yup. He saw me, but he didn't say anything. Did he ever do any rooting around about me?"

  Nodding, Linda said, "He did, but he never went too far with it, so we didn't give him any grief. I had no idea you'd put your memoirs on the net, Ed."

  "Did it before I came back to work for you. Didn't you guys check me out before you hired me, ma'am?"

  Giving me a wry look, Linda sipped her drink, then said, "Al Rollins made a note that you'd written some science fiction. Another guy scanned them and said they were clean, for our purposes. If I'd ever seen a list of titles I'd have said something to somebody. 'Dragonfly Run'. 'Field Decision'. I can't believe you found a way to make some of that stuff interesting."